Slashdot Mirror
Radiation Detecting Android Phone Coming To Japan
itwbennett writes "Softbank, Japan's third largest carrier, has teamed up with Sharp to create a radiation detector chip for the latest model in the company's popular, bare-bones Pantone line of smartphones. The chip 'can detect gamma radiation in the air at doses of between 0.05 and 9.99 microsieverts per hour,' according to an IDG News Service report. 'The phone then uses its GPS to place readings on a map. Due to go on sale in July, it runs Android 4.0 and features standard functionality for Japanese handsets, including mobile TV, touch payments and infrared transmission.'"
Seems to me that's it's too low on both the top end and bottom end. You couldn't use it for detecting real hotspots on the top end and it's so sensitive on the bottom end that even exposure to direct sunlight will have everyone panicking. I think it's more likely to cause irrational behavior than help.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
if they get up to a half mS, you probably get pop-up ads for the closest pharmacy with iodine pills.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Seriously, what if there's some excess air pollution, airborne plague or other atmosphere issue?
Would you really want to be kept from making phone calls?
So act now, and get a hands-free filter mask that goes on in seconds without interrupting your conversation.
Note: Device will serve no purpose in the event of a zombie outbreak.
IIRC, decent dosimeters require re-calibration at least yearly if not more often. (Sounds like they don't respond well to sudden shock and this increases accuracy drift.)
I wonder how SoftBank is going to handle this. I don't think people are going to appreciate a test sample being delivered to their home, and I think employees wouldn't appreciate it in stores/kiosks. I know 7Elevens sell everything in Japan, but not sure this is going to fit in well on the kombini scene.
Similarly, I don't think having the phones sent to the factory will work. It's a tad inconvenient.
Code softly but carry a big magnet.
Maybe because it (probably) doesn't use a Geiger counter?
A Geiger counter is just one of many radiation detectors (or particle detectors).
Geiger–Müller
Why don't they call a 'radiation detector' by its name? It's a Geiger Counter. Way to make a name for something fall out of common usage...
Unless it contains a Geiger–Müller tube, it isn't much of a Geiger counter. Since this phone apparently contains a 'chip'(quite possibly just a CCD of some sort packaged so that most of the pxel hits can be assumed to be from high energy radiation, possibly something cleverer/more specialized), and since cramming a gas tube and high-voltage driver circuits into a cellphone is a pain, I'm guessing that there is nothing 'Geiger' about this counter...
Why don't they call a 'radiation detector' by its name? It's a Geiger Counter. Way to make a name for something fall out of common usage...
There is not much description in the article, but I don't think it is a Geiger tube, as that requires high voltages and is fairly bulky. This is probably some sort of silicon detector.
So this is a Geiger counter... on a computer?
That means any patent on such technology is obvious and clearly just a derivative of a real Geiger counter! Reform the patent office! Woo!
</mockery>
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
That'd be a nice 'bonus' application, to add some entropy by using it as part of a hardware random number generator.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
Since Cell Phone produce some radiation, will it warn us if we have been on the phone too long?
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
Since this phone apparently contains a 'chip'(quite possibly just a CCD of some sort packaged so that most of the pxel hits can be assumed to be from high energy radiation, possibly something cleverer/more specialized),
Its interesting to speculate about "the chip". I'm guessing a scintillation counter like you're describing would be too complicated and doing the old "count SEU in a bank of ram" trick just isn't sensitive enough at the low end, or at least at a reasonable sample rate. The way I'd design it is a traditional ionization counter by playing wire bond games inside a ceramic chip with the input lead of a really high impedance op-amp, all on one little chip. The trick is building a ionization chamber that is not a microphone or seismometer. Although the phone has a microphone and accelerometer so given enough DSP... Hmm.
Go to google and type in "homemade ionization detector". Most designs are "getting old" and I think modern opamps could do a better job than 30 year old discrete jfets.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
I would think the first course of action if you're worried about radiation poisoning is to move to a place where this app would be useless (ie: low or no radiation from human sources).
Although, knowing our wonderful eastern friends, they're probably trying to make nuclear superheroes and this chip/app/phone is just a means to sniff out the Hulk from the general population. I'm assuming it can detect gamma radiation as well, so obviously we should put it to it's best use.
For instance, use one of these if you live near power lines and see if you actually are far enough away from them...
I think you're confusing ionizing and non-ionizing radiation.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
So the new android phones in Japan has ICS and can prevent cancer. What now apple? WHAT NOW?
There's an app for that.
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/turn-your-android-phone-into-a-real-star-trek-tricorder/
And was taken down
http://www.geek.com/articles/mobile/cbs-demands-removal-of-moonblinks-android-tricorder-app-2011097/
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
What kind of power lines do they have were you live that transmit ionizing radiation?
>>>You just say that nonsense about the scanners because they offend your delicate psuedo-libertarian sensibilities.
No I say that "nonsense" because Xray machines do malfunction from time-to-time, and have been known to irradiate patients with deadly levels. That is why regulations have been passed to inspect Xray machines every few months, to insure they are still working properly & outputting safe levels rather than deadly levels. (Meanwhile the TSA machines are never inspected. They could be emitting cancer-causing levels and no one would know.)
Oh and thanks for the -1 downmod anon. coward. I assume you used your actual logged-in ID to do that.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Unfortunately, I wasn't able to dig up anything on Samsung's website that provided me any clues. They have plenty of fab projects(including some sensor stuff) and various high-end measuring instruments and things; but the only references to this gamma-detector chip were stories about this cellphone. It'd be nice to find a datasheet and a digikey catalog number...
= Godzilla Foursquare Mayor of Tokyo.
No I say that "nonsense" because Xray machines do malfunction from time-to-time, and have been known to irradiate patients with deadly levels. That is why regulations have been passed to inspect Xray machines every few months, to insure they are still working properly & outputting safe levels rather than deadly levels. (Meanwhile the TSA machines are never inspected. They could be emitting cancer-causing levels and no one would know.)
According to the linear hypothesis there is no level other than zero which does not cause cancer. In the aggregate even though the scanners may pose a trivially small individual risk the chance of someone somewhere winning the TSA cancer lottery is significant.
Replace the scanners with a guillotine that with some random probability of one in hundreds of thousands to tens of millions it chops off the head of someone going thru a TSA line. This is essentially what the scanners are doing except victims will never be known and their demise will be much less humane than a guillotine.
In which case, it must really suck that you get a small amount of radiation exposure from your own body, eh?
In fact, just about enough to trigger this phone....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Yeah, seems like you'd want to know the difference between getting 9.99 microsieverts and, say, 100 millisieverts per hour. :)
-- What do you need?
-- Gnus. Lots of Gnus.
I read the title as someone using radiation to detect an Android Phone that is coming to Japan.
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
So, there's 4 types of ionizing radiation. Gamma is only one. Is Gamma the type which is mainly radiated by the isotopes of concern? Or because that's the easiest/cheapest to create a detector chip for, so they slap one in a phone, creating a 1/4 solution to the problem, and market it to the public as a more or less total solution to the problem?
For the particular case of detecting reactor isotopes, is Gamma radiation even particularly useful?
In which case, it must really suck that you get a small amount of radiation exposure from your own body, eh?
Personally I don't care about my risks because I have better things to do. You'll ruin your life and health worrying about all of this noise that could happen... it is not worth doing.
As a policy matter it is important to decision makers and the general public who care about more than just themselves. Unless I bungled a decimal or unit which I do from time to time and you chart the backscatter figures to LNT line it is one early cancer death per 5 million scans. Assume TSA processes ~1.8m peeps daily.
There are ~365 days in a year and ~3650 days in a decade. In 10 years assuming everyone goes thru the scanners this is ~1314 cancer deaths.
There are better than half a million cancer deaths in the US alone every year. Your ~131 extra annual cancer deaths is a 0.03% increase, at most.
In other words, even if your estimates of premature cancer deaths is correct, the change as a result of the TSA scans will be lost in the noise....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Can I get this in the next Nexus?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Today, radiation is a scary mystical thing, partially because people don't realize how common it is. Perhaps by having these detectors everywhere people will learn that radiation isn't the frighteningly scary thing that the media tells them it is. They will start measuring radiation everywhere: their friends, them selves, their electronics, the air, the soil, the rain, their mom's Fiestaware, their Grandma's Depression Glass. And they will start to see statistics and patterns. When they don't suddenly combust they might start looking at the numbers their detector gives them and start thinking: "Okay, the phone made lots of beeps and displayed a frowny-face: so what does that *really mean*?"
I imagine lots of people were scared by A/C power when Thomas Edison was electrocuting animals with it. But today it is all around us, and people are not scared of walking under power lines or going into their own homes. This may have the same effect.
I'm more concerned about Alpha and Beta radiation. Both are far more dangerous to human tissue. Of course they are also significantly easier to shield against.
Please describe the ionization chamber in more detail, and why it would be so sensitive to movement.
stereotypical enclosure full of gas (air). wire or something down the center maybe with spring for large chamber or just dangling. Stick a modest voltage on that wiggly wire and measure the current flowing in/out due to nearby ionizing radiation. wiggling that wire or the enclosure/shield is going to induce a signal in it. Whoops. Now a good DSP analyzer can probably process out everything but small constant currents and single event RC time constant pulses, in other words ignore 60 hz hum and speech noise. But it'll be a PITA.
To some extent a ionization chamber is just an electret (or is it condenser?) microphone thats just really freaking big and full of air and people are more interested in DC and impulse output than audio frequency output.
microphonics are not unusual in low signal level, high gain, high impedance analog electronics. ionization chambers are just another victim of microphonics problems in general.
Making one really tiny to fit in a cell phone might help, or might just make the freq response and noise output more like ultrasonic, I'd have to think about that.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
There are better than half a million cancer deaths in the US alone every year. Your ~131 extra annual cancer deaths is a 0.03% increase, at most.
In other words, even if your estimates of premature cancer deaths is correct, the change as a result of the TSA scans will be lost in the noise....
Yes you are 100% correct.
The TSA kills ~131 people per year on x-ray backscatter devices not able to detect internal explosives or petn laden underwear but hey no biggie cause CrimsonAvenger says these deaths will be lost in the noise of people who would have died of cancer anyway.
One thing I'm having trouble understanding is why it is necessary to stop with cancer? I mean since 100% of everyone living dies why not just let some three letter agency kill a few thousand random people a year just for kicks...still an insigifnicant rounding error of total people who would have died anyway. Am I being unfair?
http://it.slashdot.org/story/08/01/28/1517254/nyc-wants-to-ban-geiger-counters
http://www.villagevoice.com/2008-01-08/news/nypd-seeks-an-air-monitor-crackdown-for-new-yorkers/
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
probably only a CCD chip with a fluorescent layer on top. They are made to be cheap after all.
Every experiment which ends in a big bang is a good experiment.
I find it fascinating that there is so much misinformation and misunderstanding about what harmful radiation is (some is not as harmful). If you are insterested in learning more about the link between cell phones, EMF radiation and cancer, watch this video: http://emf.lemuriangirl.com/