Homemade beta decay reactor ideas?

[conundrum]

Hi all.

Had a look at the tritium light source based reactor.

A couple of ideas for improvement.

1) Use an infrared LED (large area die) salvaged from an old camcorder illuminator instead of the solar cell.

2) Don't use a supercapacitor. These tend to be very "leaky", better to use something like a ceramic capacitor as they can be obtained in values of 100uF or more.

3) Use a circuit based on a low power switchmode oscillator like a JFET pair, tunnel diode etc.
These can operate on very low voltages down to 0.3V
I once had one of these based on a 2N3819/Ph3820 pair working on under 1 volt and lighting a white LED with under 200uA draw.

Kind regards, -A

[BarsMonster]

Hi all.

Had a look at the tritium light source based reactor.

A couple of ideas for improvement.

1) Use an infrared LED (large area die) salvaged from an old camcorder illuminator instead of the solar cell.

2) Don't use a supercapacitor. These tend to be very "leaky", better to use something like a ceramic capacitor as they can be obtained in values of 100uF or more.

3) Use a circuit based on a low power switchmode oscillator like a JFET pair, tunnel diode etc.
These can operate on very low voltages down to 0.3V
I once had one of these based on a 2N3819/Ph3820 pair working on under 1 volt and lighting a white LED with under 200uA draw.

Kind regards, -A

I can only argue about #1.

Anyway, this article was a 1st of April joke, hope you enjoyed it.

[xperroni]

Anyway, this article was a 1st of April joke, hope you enjoyed it.

Well, joke or not, I was intrigued by this idea of homemade nuclear-powered electronics. Those tritium capsules have got quite hard to find recently, but I've managed to order one from a Chinese online shop. When it arrives, I'll see if I can pair it to a set of electric motor and solar panel I have lying around, from a toy robot I bought last year and never assembled.

I have no electronics background whatsoever, but I wonder how hard would be to extend this project into something more flashy? I wonder if it would be possible to use the solar panel to power a battery, and then use the battery's power to drive a simplistic bot – just a PIC, a motor and a light sensor perhaps?

[BarsMonster]

Anyway, this article was a 1st of April joke, hope you enjoyed it.

I have no electronics background whatsoever, but I wonder how hard would be to extend this project into something more flashy? I wonder if it would be possible to use the solar panel to power a battery, and then use the battery's power to drive a simplistic bot – just a PIC, a motor and a light sensor perhaps?

You need much larger capsules. Waaaaaay larger. Or like 100 of small ones to make detectable amount of energy.
You will not be able to power a robot of it. Maybe just low-power microcontroller and a led, which would flash once in 30 minutes.