DIY Muon Detector

Muons are fundamental particles created when cosmic rays collide with particles in Earth’s atmosphere. They are way more powerful than x-rays—but can be used in similar ways to CT Scan devices; but with larger/thicker objects. Instead of CT Scanning someone’s body, you can use the stronger muons to image entire Egyptian/Mexican pyramids and find hidden, undiscovered rooms. Likewise, instead of just x-raying a suitcase at an airport—you can scan an entire plane’s cargo hold. Its first real-world use was in 1970 when scanning the Pyramid of Khafre, looking for hidden rooms.

 

So, of course I want to try detecting a muon. Not a whole bunch—just one. Reliably.

 

How do scientists detect muons?  They can follow the tracks in a spark chamber (which I have, but it’s too small). They can use photographic film—I have a darkroom. They can use scintillation crystal sensors—which I have, but I don’t have dozens of them.

 

How will I  detect muons? By using the humble Geiger counter with a Geiger-Muller tube. A Geiger counter is basically a lightbulb with a tiny gap in it filled with gas. When a particle passes through the lightbulb (tube) it completes an electrical circuit and you get a click noise.

 

Basically Geiger-Muller tubes are just like those bug zapper lights people have in their backyards.

I'm using the humble Soviet era, 400 volt SBM-20 tube for this. Two of them.

 

But Geiger counters will click when hit by X-rays, gamma rays, alpha particles, beta particles, etc. Plus all the background radiation makes them click around 20 times a minute in a normal room.

 

So, we cover the Geiger-Muller tube in a lead sheet, which will block most of those particles.

Then we get a second Geiger-Muller tube and cover that with lead.

 

Then, and here is the genius part, we stack the tubes on top of each other so that the only particles/rays that would trigger both tubes would have to be: traveling at 90 degrees to the Earth’s surface; be powerful enough to pass through not one, but two sheets of lead and two tubes; and be moving so fast as to trigger both tubes virtually at the same time via relativistic motion.

 

How do we know if the tubes are triggered at the same time (not just close)? With a humble AND-gate microchip. This microchip has two inputs and one output. Only if it receives two input signals at the same time will it output its own triggered signal (and light an LED or make a click on a speaker or a spike on my oscilloscope).

 

 

If you look at the pinout of the chip (a 74HC08 AND gate  logic chip) you will see that if PIN1 and PIN2 get a signal at the same exact time = it will output a signal to PIN3.

Pin1 and Pin2 also each get a 100k resistor to ground (this lets the chip reset to off).

The yellow wires are input Pins 1 and 2. They have 100k resistors going to negative rail. 

The other end of the yellow wires go to the 3rd pin of the NE555 chips on the geiger boards. One yellow goes to one pin3 of geiger board, the other yellow wire goes to pin3 of the other NE555 chip on the other board. 

Here are the yellow wires going to Pins 1 and 2 on the 74HC08 chip. Notice the 100k resistors going from each one to the (blue) negative rail on the breadboard.

Here is the other end going to Pin3 of the NE555 chip. According to the schematics it should be possible to tie into this via a jumper or LED or speaker connection of the geigers, but that doesn't to work. 

Thus, this is what's known as a coincidence detector.

So, stack two cheap Geiger counters sandwiched in lead plates.

Output from both go to a $2 logic AND-gate chip.

AND-gate chip outputs to: LED or Oscilloscope or Speaker.

Literal back of an envelope layout:

Any output basically must equal a muon. They occur about once per minute on Earth.

To make things easier I connected one geiger board to a 5v USB wall plug that had a higher (2 amp) current rating than usual. Not sure this is necessary.

Then I connected the always on screw tightening power block things together from both units. That poweeed the other board. 

Then I ran a second pair of power wires to the breadboard.

So, USB wall plug to first geiger board. Then red and black wires between the boards:

Then another pair of red and black split off to power the breadboard:

Those go to the red and blue power rails on the breadboard. I also ran a short black wire from the right blue negative to the left vlue negative rail on the breadboard. That way I could easily run 100k resistors from the 74HC08 1 &2 Pins to the negative easily.

I'll probably reroute that more cleanly in the future. It was a quick test. My breadboard LED came on with mo input! That's why the resistors are needed to zero everything out and start with an OFF LED. Weird, but thats how logic chips like the AND gate work. You have to tell them what 0 or off looks like or else they go nuts.

So, it works.

If I test by turning both on I get an occasional light up by the LED on the breadboard. Especially if I put a radioactive substance near them. Even then, it doesn't light up often relative to the individual Geiger counters clicking and blinking. Good!

In the future I might pull each Geihlger board's J1 jumper to disable their speakers--and then put a speaker on thr breadboard.

Watchmaking and Lunation Moon Phase Gears Update

 Watchmaking and Lunation Moon Phase Gears Update

Albrecht 0-3mm drill chuck for using the tiniest of drill bits (1/64 ; 0.33mm ; .4mm ; etc.).

Watch I'm making from scratch. Here is the 58mm main plate with 1 mm lip around it. I cut in a 0.25mm ledge for the dial to sit on.

Here is operation #4 on my  lathe: putting in the 0.25mm lip that is 0.5mmm deep:

Finished main plate:

Main plate and slightly smaller (but thicker) piece that will be the bridge:

Lunar moon phase gear train mock-up model. The red lines are the axles. I can use any size/pitch/module gears as long as each set that touches each other match. 

The 9, 9 and 35 must mesh to each other only.

The 11 and 40 must mesh to each other only.

The 17 and 71 much mesh to each other only.

So, the 11 and 40 could be tiny little gears that cellphones use to vibrate when they ring, while the 17 and 71 could be huge gears out of a car's transmission--or vise-versa. 

The center bore holes of each gear doesn't really matter. With the lathe I can make an axle that is as thin as a toothpick on one end and as thick as a baseball bat on the other.

So, I'll be searching through my random supplies for gears.

Digital caliper battery eliminator taig lathe

So I have digital calipers on my Taig lathe to measure .00015" or .01mm and they take an LR44 1.5v battery.

The battery drains even when off so I found a 1.5vDC wall adapter and wired it up. Weirdly, under this very light current (amp) load it was giving almost 3v.

So I put a resistor on the negative wire. I tried a few and either got: nothing; all the numbers showing 888888; or almost zero but when I hit the "zero" button it would jump to .0005 or 6 or 7. I tried a bunch of resistors until the 51k Ohm resistor let me hit the zero button and the display stayed at .0000"  or 00.00mm. 

Since the 1.5v setting on the wall transformer was putting out 3.3v that means I can replace it with a less odd USB cable (although many are 5v). I'd probably have to change the resistor for a slighly higher value.

I works and no batteries needed.

2.8v or 3.3v we don't care, meows!

Safecracking open a safe with magnet

 Opening a safe with a magnet

You're like Felix the cat with your bag of tricks!

Glyomorph Glyos + xenomorph

 

I kit bashed an Onell Design figure called Pheyden into an alien xenomorph. The Glyomorph! 

It uses the Glyos peg system to have interchangeable hands, feet, limbs, heads, etc. with many designers.

Here is the Pheyden figure:

I put an extra small head on him and him backwards:

Two part Aves epoxy clay parts A and B kneaded together gives about a 4 hour working time before it air dries:

Ended up doing the tail in two parts and gluing together afterwards:

Inspired by: Crafsman Steadycraftin and AC Toy Design and Onell Design.

I also made a Cataloging Librarian action figure and made a silicone mold of it and blasted out resin copies in various colors using Smooth Cast 45d and 65d resin, ignite pigments and a vacuum degassing for the silicone and pressure pot casting for the resin in the mold:

DeVilbis painting pressure pot:

With l that safety stuff removed to allow 60psi to squeeze any bubbles in the resin to microscopic size:

Vacuum chamber I made for a fusor device repurposed for degassing the silicone mold making liquid:

Logic analyzers and Alarm System Jamming and RFID Security Decoding + Logic Analyzer and Wiegand

LOGIC ANALYZER AND PROBE + PULSEVIEW

I started logic analyzing a 16F916 chip in a wireless thermostat using PulseView (free software from Saleae) and a generic logic analyzer hooked up to the old Linux laptop.

It turns out PulseView has decoders for Wiegand...the protocols I was using while decoding and cloning RFID security dongles and door access cards! Remove the data analyzer and put on an antenna: sucking up all that Wiegand security info. Record and play it back.

Here is just the little logic probe pen (in case you've never seen one before). I just buzzes and squeals and lights up with up/down arrows and that shows up where the logic is going or coming from.

Here is the logic analyzer with it hooked up to legs of the microchip; this shows the physical setup and screen results (see software settings below):

This is the 16F916 chip I was first playing with:

Below are the nice and easy settings I used in PulseView for the logic analyzer (the thing with the red wire clippy things--not the pen-shaped probe thingy which just buzzes and lights up). Saleae has a free download on their website, but since I was using the tiny old Linux laptop I added it via Linux Package Manager. 

Oh look, some Wiegand security info. Hmm...stream state and bit values. Sniff out the security signals and then see the binary values.

So what can you do with this setup? Alarm system sniffing, breaching and JAMMING!

For right now let's forget about the Wiegand stuff and focus on a simple wireless alarm 433Mhz 866Mhz jammer and sniffer:

A Baofeng GT-5R radio can be used to jam home alarm systems. Many home alarms operate wirelessly (window, door, hallway sensors) on either 433Mhz or 866Mhz. This cheap, $25 radio can transmit on 43Mhz--while doing so it also sends out a frequency at double the Mhz...which just happens to be 866Mhz. 

You can see the little burbling waves of the background 433Mhz devices...and then see them all drowned out by the 5 Watt radio. Now, you have to remember that 5W is way, way more powerful than what all the little infrared wall mounted sensors and cameras are putting out, so the radio easily drowns out pretty much the entire alarm network (and all the neighbors too). 

This radio receives 144Mhz-148Mhz, FM radio and it can also TRANSMIT on 420MHz-450Mhz. 

This was tested on an installed alarm system and WORKED. Holding down the transmit button allows you to open doors/windows and walk past room/hallway sensors without setting off the alarm or even getting an interference warning from the alarm main box! The sniffer is an RTL-SDR dongle, hooked to a MooElec Ham it up box running into a laptop (running linux mint, but it works on Windows). The antenna is a simple telescoping AM/FM type antenna and the antenna on the transmitter is the cheapie one that came with it. The software to see all this awesomeness was CubicSDR with basically the default settings.

This post is like 8 different things smooshed into one: alarm jamming, Wiegand RFID keycard and dongle cloning (much more on that later), logic analyzers and probes, logic protocol decoding, PulseView and cheap radio alarm jammers (more on that later too). I'll edit out some and try to separate this all...basically the little Linux laptop is now the center of a terrifying, portable electronics warfare setup. LOL!

My QA answer for someone using a cheap logic analyzer:

For Linux go to software packager and install "PulseView" and then install "sigrick-firmware-fx2lafw" which is the driver for this.

Start PulseView and this should show up.

If it doesnt click the downward arrow on top center edge of screen and select "connect to device" and select "fx2lafw" which will show the device as Saleae Logic. Click run.

You need to have this hooked up to something. I used a wireless thermostat and hooked the ground wire to the spring holding in the AA battery powering it.

I hooked the CLK wire to a clock leg of a microchip inside of the thermostat and randomly hooked some other wires to other legs and clicked run: awesome!

I am a complete novice with Linux and logic, lol!

M1K3 FR0M D3TR01T

Push-Push Cardioid Curve Latch

 

Just made a Cardioid curve push push latch with my new milling machine and drill press. The straightaway is lower than the diagonal path so the pointer can't go up the diagonal, only down it on the return.

Scrap aluminum, wd-40 as cutting fluid. Little Machine Shop manual mill.

Angles milled by just turning the rotating base machine vise and locking it down again for each angle. 

I saw This Old Tony make a similar one (though he used a CNC machine) and figured if I changed the return curve to a properly angled diagonal I could make it with my manual mill. So I did!

There is less friction that way so I could use a weaker spring.

Cardioid = heart-shaped

I did this while avoiding a cardio-workout of snow shoveling.

Happy Valentine's Day 2022!