Using the Pocket Geiger Sensor to detect radiation from a moving source

Other Miscellaneous
1

I am referring to this sparkfun product: “Pocket Geiger Radiation Sensor - Type 5”, the SEN-14209 (https://www.sparkfun.com/products/14209#documents-tab).

I’m looking for a radiation sensor to use in the payload of a rocketry project, to measure radiations in the atmosphere and how they vary with height.

I was looking at this product specifically because it’s small enough to fit in my payload, but I see that it doesn’t provide instant results, but that it requires 2 minutes of wait time to get actual results.

What does that mean though? That it takes 2 minutes to elaborate? That it takes 2 minutes to make the full reading?

Could this be suitable for my application? Considering that the rocket will be moving when I’ll try to get these readings, the radiation source won’t be “constant”, so if the sensor takes 2 minutes to make a reading, but the radiation source “moved” the results will be completely skewed.

I’m not sure I understand how this sensor works and if I could use it for my project.

Can anyone help? Thank you

2

All “Geiger” counters need to count for some period of time before a statistically significant reading can be reported. The one linked is very insensitive, so long counting periods are required. In addition the sensor is vibration-sensitive, so it would be a very poor choice for model rocketry.

A conventional Geiger tube with a simple one-transistor interface would be much better, and very small, high voltage, low current power supplies for them can be found on eBay. Check out these as well: https://www.rhelectronics.store/diy-geiger-counter-kit

3

The LND712 Geiger tube is small enough to fit into most rockets, but even smaller ones are available.

The smaller the tube, the less sensitive, but count rates go up very rapidly with altitude, so don’t necessarily exclude a tube based on the background rate measured at low elevation.