Cocktail with fine wine ingredient.

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Cocktail with fine wine ingredient.

Postby Steven Sesselmann » Sun Jun 10, 2012 5:44 pm

Hi Guys,

Some of you might have heard about the recent eBay scoop where a number of small LND He3 detectors went for $35.00, well one of them ended up in my lab, due to the generosity of Adam Ingle. My task was to see if it would work with the GS-1100A.

After a few initial measurements I realized that it needed a better preamp, and fortunately I had one of Doug's Fine Wine preamps to spare. After hooking it up to my sound card I literally received the radio on it, so it was going to need full shielding.

I went down to the local kitchen supply discount store, and wahlah, there was a perfect container, a stainless steel cocktail mixer for $12.00.

Not only the perfect size, but it also had a stainless steel cap that formed a separate chamber for the preamp.

I filled up the container with paraffin wax, and poked a hole for the detector just before it had fully set, the preamp was attached with double sided tape inside the top strainer section of the shaker.

Used with PRA, and my sound card, it seems to pick up just the right amount of neutrons for the background.

Well done on the excellent preamp...!

Steven

DSCF0202.jpg
He3 Neutron detector with wax moderator, built into a cocktail mixing cup.

DSCF0205.jpg
Doug and Joe's Fine wine preamp, perfectly fits under the cap and strainer.

DSCF0203.jpg
He3 detector set in wax, with coupling capacitor (After the photo was taken, I scooped out some wax to fit a 9V battery)
Last edited by Steven Sesselmann on Mon Jun 11, 2012 10:33 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Cocktail with fine wine ingredient.

Postby Doug Coulter » Sun Jun 10, 2012 9:22 pm

That's some real nice work, Steven - not the least bit shabby. Yes, the bipolar front end of that preamp can rectify loud RF from outside its design bandpass. I'd have used a fet there, but at the fairly low impedance input (about 66k) I couldn't get the noise figure as nice with one, and they are a lot harder to temperature compensate the bias (the preamp is fully DC coupled internally).

This kind of application is exactly what I designed it for - put it right up in the sensor head and send loud, noise resistant signals downstream, so little arcs and sparks from your fusor (or whatever) don't make for false counts.

We did a realtime online vid chat tonight with a full demo of my fusor, this preamp in a few detectors - it was a lot of fun. Google plus lets us have up to 9 people in on a video/audio chat, it's pretty cool, and we'll be doing it regularly from here on out, so all board members are encouraged to get a google+ account and webcam setup so we can talk. Works well in all of windows, linux, and mac. It does take a reasonably quick computer when there are a lot of people on the "hangout" but not too extreme - I hosted this one on a dual core intel duo just fine - you don't need an i7 or anything like that.

I think we'll be picking up a few new members soon - a lot of people into some pretty cool tech stuff were there and got the link tonight.
Posting as just me, not as the forum owner. Everything I say is "in my opinion" and YMMV -- which should go for everyone without saying.
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Re: Cocktail with fine wine ingredient.

Postby Steven Sesselmann » Mon Jun 11, 2012 3:41 am

Doug,

Thanks for feedback, I will be needing a couple more of those preamps when you have time.

I do have a google+ account, but have never used the video feature...cant be that hard.

Might even do a hookup when I get FICS working again.

Steven
http://www.beeresearch.com.au....take a difficult problem and find a simple solution!
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Re: Cocktail with fine wine ingredient.

Postby Doug Coulter » Mon Jun 11, 2012 9:45 am

We'll see if we can get Joe to make more PCB's to build out - I bought the parts in large quantities (why not, they are all cheap - this is an all-labor product). I added you to my "circles" so next time I'm setting up a group chat, you'll get notified. Sure would be nice to have the closest thing we can to F/F talk! Now all I need is a couple more working webcams so I can do it from any of the labs here.
Posting as just me, not as the forum owner. Everything I say is "in my opinion" and YMMV -- which should go for everyone without saying.
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Re: Cocktail with fine wine ingredient.

Postby Joe Jarski » Mon Jun 11, 2012 10:06 pm

Very nice job! I'll get some more of those PCB's made - I'm going to need some more for myself too. If I remember right, I was going to add a little more space around the wiring connections so it's a little easier to solder.

The vid chat sounds cool - looks like I'm gonna have to get a webcam.
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Re: Cocktail with fine wine ingredient.

Postby Steven Sesselmann » Mon Jun 11, 2012 10:26 pm

Joe,

Great, a little more space around the solder tabs would be great, and a little bigger pad wouldn't hurt.

Steven
http://www.beeresearch.com.au....take a difficult problem and find a simple solution!
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Re: Cocktail with fine wine ingredient.

Postby Doug Coulter » Tue Jun 12, 2012 9:21 am

Sounds like we've got a plan. We'd love to have you chatting up there, guys! "The hangout show" has also contacted me to host a regular show, something along the lines of "Mr Wizard" and if that happens, I'll need all the help I can get. I'd forgotten this one, but was forcibly reminded the other night that you can actually make your brain sore. I was on from 7 to after midnight showing off the fusor and answering questions ranging from "why is there air" to "what's the meaning of life" with a lotta science (What's a photon? Is this quantum stuff really true?) and music in between. Fun, but exhausting...

FWIW, I'm using logitech cameras and headset as the best of my setups. Their windows software is a bit intrusive and annoyingly popping up a lot (or it used to), but you don't actually even need that, and the stuff works without complaint and using default settings in linux here. I haven't tried their latest windows stuff, but I'll get around to it. They also have a vid phone service, not sure if they charge for it or not.
For now, the google+ thing seems to be working out fine -
Posting as just me, not as the forum owner. Everything I say is "in my opinion" and YMMV -- which should go for everyone without saying.
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