Development of a game boy based radiation survey meter

Abstract

This research aimed to develop a game boy based radiation survey meter for radiation dose ratemeasurement. The measuring range of exposure rate in the range of 0-100 mR/hr and count rate inthe range of 0-5.5 x104 CPM were designed to display on the game boy monitor with 3 automaticallyranges changing. The system composed of 4 main parts: e.g., the thin window Geiger Muller detector,high voltage power supply, signal pulse shaper and interfacing part for communication between radiationcounter and game boy in form of a plug-in game cartridge under the cooperation of microcontrollerPIC16F877A and PSD813F2. By applying a game boy as a base operation of the developed radiationsurvey meter, it was found that the graphic display utility gave high flexible support in analog anddigital display designing, both alpha-numerical measuring unit and analog meter. Moreover the functionand joy stick keys were useful for assigning the control functions of measuring system, resulted inaffordable and ease of use. The power consumption was 296 mW and with 700 mA-hr Li-ion battery,the continuous operation last 8 hours. For the exposure rate calibration using a 662 keV of cesium-137standard source, it was found that at exposure rate range, e.g. (100 mR) x0.01, x0.1, and x1 gavemeasuring errors of less than ±2.2%. In addition, the developed system could be used for measurementa counting rate of alpha and beta radiations.