raleighlittles / gq_geiger_counter_comm_protocol

[WIP] A Rust implementation of the GQ Geiger Communication Protocol

Background

A company called GQ makes "smart" nuclear radiation detecting devices aka "geiger counters". These devices come with a USB port which provides a serial interface to the device, intended for data logging usage.

GQ published their "RFC" which provides the serial port interface specifications. See RFC1801.txt.

About

This project consists of helper tools for using your GQ GMC.

There's 3 main functionalities provided:

1. A simple GUI application for controlling system parameters and device buttons:

This is particularly useful if your device is out of reach or if the physical buttons no longer work for whatever reason.

2. A "timesync" feature, allowing you to synchronize your geiger counter with your host PC's time. This is useful since these devices don't have any kind of NTP functionality.

3. A CSV logging feature. This logs the geiger counter's readings directly to a CSV file, and is useful when you need to take long-running measurements that would exceed the geiger counter's on-device storage.

5. A config dump feature. 🚧 This lets you see a parsed version of the device's configuration memory and take backups of it.

Usage

Run the binary providing the first and second arguments as the serial device name and baud rate, and then thirdly, the option you wish to use, e.g.:

$ ./gq_gmc /dev/ttyUSB0 115200 --gui

to launch the GUI

$ ./gq_gmc /dev/ttyUSB0 115200 --timesync

to do the time synchronization

$ ./gq_gmc /dev/ttyUSB0 115200 --log <CSV_FILENAME>

to store records to CSV file.