I’ve spent the better part of a day updating my radiation monitoring computer.  Not wanting to use all the energy of a full desktop computer, I’ve decided to move the installation to a small netbook that’s been laying around.  About a year ago, I purchased a USB converter for the Aware Electronics RM-80 geiger counter and I finally decided to install it.

Needless to say, it has taken way longer than I had hoped.

First, installation of the software was not completely straight forward.  The software from Aware Electronics is somewhat complex in there are many different components and the documentation is a little haphazard – you definately need to “dive in” and read it all if you are going to do anything more than basic.  For me, I am very specific about the type of graphs that I wanted.  The scripting is a llittle complex, and when I had previously ventured into this area, I should have commented the .BAT files a little more.  One can never remember the fine points of these things several years later.  As there is a .BAT file on this site, I will be uploading an update that is well commented for those of you who might be interested in emulating it.

Next was the other programs that needed to be updated.  First, the windows remote desktop  was not working.  About 2 hours was spent on that…until it came to my attention that XP Home edition doesn’t have that functionality.  A Google search did come up with a solution…and now the remote desktop works.

Finally, I needed to transfer all the other “glue”-type programs and get them working.  Specifically, I needed to re-setup Watch4Folder and WinSCP to upload the pictures.  Again, a good reason to remember to comment liberally when writing script files.

So now, basement radiation is being monitored on the low-power netbook, and is now being tracked by microSeiverts, whereas it previously was reported in microRoentgens.  The Seivert is a more common measure of radioactivity and thus I felt it best to update.