I’ve seen some DIY arduino kits but I’m really curious if you could build or purchase a home geiger counter that integrates with HA. Anyone have any experience with this?
Did you manage to make it work?I made a blog on this.
https://www.connectix.nl/connecting-a-geiger-counter-to-home-assistant/
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Are we all waiting for WWIII or something?
Thinking about it, after watching “Chernobyl” recently I can see why this would be useful in Europe. I am lucky tp be at the bottom of the Pacific 
Actually planning on playing around with this on the weekend using this kit:
Will connect to an Arduino w/W5500 Ethernet and publish via MQTT.
Nice to have a background radiation count to add to environmental data. Plus, you know, an automation that will hopefully never be triggered tied to a trend sensor that notifies on a sudden increase. Well, it will be triggered once or twice for testing when I shove a chip of Cs137 near the tube…
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coincidentally, I think it was after reading about the tv series coming out that I had the idea. This is one of those things I’ve always been curious about and it seems like a good idea to have running and hope you never need it.
Thanks for the write up, this is cool. And the price is really good for an already built kit.
Good success this weekend with my RH Electronics Geiger counter. The board is very simple, just producing a pulse with every count. So very easy to connect up to an Arduino, ESP8266, etc. and then just count the pulses and publish via MQTT. I happened to use an STM32 since I already had one sitting on a breadboard with a W5500 Ethernet module already wired up. Connected the Geiger counter impulse line to pin A0, attached an interrupt, and just counted every time there was a pulse. Every 15 seconds multiplied by 4 to get a CPM (based on the example Arduino code on RH Electronics site), did the conversion to uSv (example code) then published via MQTT.
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Nice. Sounds like an ideal task for esphome.
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Yes, looks like both esphome and TASMOTA support pulse counters. TASMOTA has a few more configuration options for pulse counters which may make it a little better for this.
I’m going to eventually roll this into an environmental sensor. Right now have a ESP8266 and BMP280 running TASMOTA for outdoor climate. Going to move the BMP280 to this sensor, might as well leave the STM32, and power it via POE. I like everything that doesn’t move around to be wired.
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I am very interested if there is a direct ESPhome integration. I guess it’s a simple pulse compter ?
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I’ve never used ESPHome as I prefer stuff to be wired via Ethernet (because of reliability, longevity, and have to power it with a wire anyway) but here is my best guess at an ESPHome config for CPM:
sensor:
- platform: pulse_counter
pin: (whatever)
name: "Radiation CPM"
count_mode: rising_edge
update_interval: 60
unit_of_measurement: CPM
And with a CPM measurement you can calculate dose rates in your automation.
Or change the update_interval to a lower value and multiply in the automation to get the measurement more often.
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I just set it up with ESPHome and it was very easy!
Very basic code and wiring.
This is the relevant code part of the ESPHome device, an ESP8266:
sensor:
- platform: pulse_counter
pin: GPIO4
name: "Geiger Counter"
update_interval: 15s
EDIT: I fixed the code. I realized that ESPhome calculates correctly the pulse/minute when changing the update_interval from default value.
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Thanks a lot :)… It will helps me
Hi.
I can’t get this to work on my ESP32, as the counter does not increase with the impulses from the sensor.
Did you set any count_mode parameter latter on?
Thanks.
How you convert CPM to uSv ?
You can find an example on the website at https://rhelectronics.net/store/radiation-detector-geiger-counter-diy-kit-second-edition.html
The Arduino Code by Brian Gauger" link has the simplest method of just multiplying it by a “magic number” conversion factor:
https://ln.sync.com/dl/e5ef275c0/jrxzkzjn-gpgn4svx-s8z9873v-np2ieuw7
For the SBM-20 used in the RH Electronics kit, multiply the CPM by 0.0057.
For different tubes, usually a Google will turn up the magic number. Or you have to go hunting for the tube datasheet.
Anyone has this working with Wemos D1 Mini? I’m still trying to figure out if I have faulty kit or doing something completely wrong
What is the problem you are having?
Keep in mind that most of the Geiger kits output a 5V pulse.
ESP8266 isn’t 5V tolerant on most I/O pins.
What pin are you using?
What firmware?
Have you verified the Geiger counter works by itself with a speaker or scope on the output?
Thanks for followup @AaronCake.
I tried to get it working with Wemos D1 mini - it is producing ticking sound and LED is blinking too.
No matter what pin I’m using (tried D4 and D5 ) I get strange results. Even with some blinking, it’s giving very low rates - mostly 0, and maximum is 0,00x.
I did use J305 multipliers 0.00812037037037 (tried even 123.147092360319)
The problem is that even when it registers something (led + sound) I get 0 - that can be dozen of ticks a minute and still 0.
Also, I’m using 4 decimal spaces - still getting 0.
EDIT: Forgot to say - I’m using ESPHome for testing. Also counter receives power from ESP board, not independently.