Nixie Tube Geiger Counter

A long, long time ago the folks at bildr.org got their hands on some nixie tubes and some components from ogi lumen, and built a twitter follower counter.  You can see the post here:  http://bildr.org/2010/11/twixie/  At the end of the post, they outline a plan to give away a set of nixie tubes and all the fixin’s required to work them, as well as a voucher for laser cutting from ponoko.com.  Well, it turns out I won that contest!

After a fair amount of designing and redesigning, I decided to make my geiger counter look like an old-timey cathedral radio with a detachable wand to check various sundries for radiation.  It was a bit more ambitious of a project than I realized at first but I think the results were well worth the effort.

Step 1: Materials

Well, there's a lot of things you'll need and I probably forgot some, but here's the main parts:

Nixie tubes, drivers, and power supply
Geiger tube
     -electronic components to build a power supply for said Geiger tube
     -various electronics tools, such as a multimeter, alligator clips, soldering iron, etc.
     -an oscilloscope is helpful
Arduino Uno
Hook-up wire
12 V wall wart/power supply
multiposition selection switch + knob
power switch
curly phone cable + 2 jacks
clear tube to use as a wand for the geiger tube

Walnut plank
     -router and router bit
Veneer
Money for laser cutting
Wood glue
Clamps

Comments

[bigern00]

I'm not currently in the market for a geiger counter, but I really like the way your "cathedral style" came together. The wood choice, proportions, and atomic styling are well executed. Congrats on the Cabot contest.

[N.fletch]

A vote for you, good sir.

[Higgs Boson]

This is Awesome. I love the retro look! I would like to make my own but I would rater use a digital readout, just for the sake of saving money and making it a little smaller. Do you think you could include just a picture of the schematic for the geiger muller tube circuit? Thanks.

[moustachenator]

I've added the schematic to the geiger counter section. If you have any trouble getting it to work, let me know. Be careful building it and always discharge the capacitors before touching any wires.

[Aleator777]

I have absolutely no need for this, but I totally want it. Awesomely retrofuturistic! Where did you find the perforated copper sheeting?

[moustachenator]

I don't really remember. I keep a box full of what is basically junk. Every once in a while something from my junk box comes in handy, which justifies my keeping it around.

[moustachenator]

Thanks for your kind comments! I'm really pleased with how it turned out and I'm glad you all like it.

[Mechanic2011]

That's a really cool instructable!!
I just scored a whole bunch of the Nixie Tubes in a couple of sizes and also some of the Fluorescent (Vacuum Tube Fluorescent Display Tubes that look like LED's inside of tubes but glow a blue or green color) versions of the Nixie tubes as well while I was on a 3 week vacation this year in Kiev ,Ukraine.
I found them at their electronics market place.
I had some of the merchants bringing them from home to their shops to sell them to me.
They were not that expensive considering I was getting them almost right from the source.
Some are brand new ,some are actually used ones removed from working equipment.
Some only display numbers while others are alpha numeric.
Most of these Nixie tubes were built in The Russian Federation or Ukraine.
I just packed them up VERY carefully in my carry one luggage and brought them home with me.
Now the next thing is to build the high voltage power supplies for the tubes.

[lindenturn]

This is really nice. The entire idea behind it, the case, the look, the operation, etc. Really great job.

[lafnbear]

Congrats on the contest win! Hopefully, I'll never have need for a Geiger counter, but beautiful build on the case!