Cosmic Pi
Cosmic Pi - a low cost distributed cosmic ray detector, based on Raspberry Pi.
Cosmic rays are everywhere, flying through the atmosphere, our bodies, our computers, everything. Previously the detection and analysis of Cosmic Rays was the exclusive domain of high energy physicists. We aim to make the detection and analysis of cosmic rays accessible to students, educators and ordinary people with an interest. The Cosmic Pi started as an after work project at CERN and is available here under the CERN OHL for all to build. It uses a specially designed detector combined with the low cost hardware of the Raspberry Pi computer for data storage and online analysis.
As featured in THE Port 2014 (Pier X1 team).
Technical Specification Prototype 1
*Low cost plastic scintillator detection medium
*SiPMT readout from scintillator
*On-board multi-stage analog front end
*Coincidence triggering with variable threshold
*2 channel, 12 bit ADC
*Integrated -72V DC power supply (Version 1)
*GPS for detector localisation and 300uS timing accuracy
*33 MHz event clock (Version 1)
*MEMS barometer for altitude and atmospheric pressure
*I2C Temperature & Relative Humidity sensor for calibration and
Scintillator monitoring
*Raspberry Pi Hat form factor compatible for easy integration with
Raspberry Pi
*Data acquisition, representation and storage software stack written in
Python
*Fully open source design, released under CERN Open Hardware License to
encourage widespread use and
adoption
Block diagram
Project information
- Official website: CosmicPi.org
- TEDx talk on the project
- Software
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Users
Contacts
Commercial producers
- Work in progress
Project
- James Devine - General question about project
- Cosimo Cantini
- Etam Noah
- Hugo Day
- Justin Salmon
- Leïla Haegel
- Ruslan Asfandiyarov
Project Status
Date | Event |
02-08-2012 | Prototype Cosmic Ray Detector using Android Phone at CERN Webfest |
02-11-2014 | Development of Prototype Version 1 for The Port Hackathon @ CERN |
25 June 2015