Fallout-Themed Geiger Counter Monitors Japan’s Radiation

A Seattle-area man who lived in Europe during the Chernobyl disaster, now wary of radiation from Japan’s Fukushima nuclear accidents traversing the Pacific, built a Fallout-themed case for a Geiger counter that reports its findings automatically via Twitter.

Washington-based RobCo_PIPBoy has been reporting hourly counts per minute of between 17 and 24 since Fabien Royer, the engineer, hooked it into Twitter. Counts per minute is a calculation of all radioactive decay events regardless of strength, so it’s difficult to convert that figure into some sort of healthy/not healthy dosage, but it is an indicator of increased radioactive, well, activity and in this case, things seem to be stable. Royer himself says that a comparison of his findings to those of Environmental Protection Agency air radiation monitoring stations When comparing the data samples from this project to the data produced by the EPA’s air radiation monitoring stations, “the averages are aligned for the most part, which makes me feel better about the transparency and the integrity of our local government”.

But it’s interesting to think of a distant, post Apocalyptic future, of a long-abandoned monitoring station still earnestly transmitting its radiation findings, if anyone is left to hear them, very much like the broadcast stations and signals encountered in the Fallout continuity.

Building a Twitter-Enabled Geiger Counter with a Netduino+ [Fabien Royer]