robertgawron / cameraradioactivitydetector Goto Github PK

Hi, I just randomly found this repo and must say the idea is quite intriguing :)

A Raspberry Pi and the Raspi Cam are readily availabe and should be everything you need to get this working in theory.
Anyways, it looks like you hit a wall there and I think there might be possible reasons for this (you probably know this already, but I might share it as well):

1. The camera sensor inside the module is way too thin for enough photons to interact in the silicon directly to trigger a pixel.
2. The dark count rate of the camera is probably way too high for it to register single photon events, even if a couple of gamma photon triggered it.

One possible way to get this to work might be just using a decently sized scintillator in front of the sensor. This way the photon energy is much more in-line with the sensor specs and more light will be emitted. Though I don't know if the camera dark counts are low enough in order for this to work successfully. What do you think?