They have gone well above my pay grade as well. But the bottom line is that they have done much work on developing a DIY x-ray diffraction spectrometer for identification of unknown metals. I believe they are fairly close to a working prototype. I also expect that they intend to publish their results when when finished with the project. It may still be too complicated for the average but at least there will be a road map.
@graham-xrf and
@homebrewed are the two most active developers. Perhaps they will chime in.
At the least. Mark is well ahead, working on software that will capture the energy in a pulse, and he has had real pulses in the past from the x-ray photodiode that happened in his test setup.
To answer the question about whether the average HM user can get one going, the design intention is to make that as easy as possible and as affordable as possible, using stuff most members already posses, such as a smartphone that has a web browser, or a laptop, or PC.
Making available a little PCB, with electronics already on it, is not beyond us. There needs to be be enough instructions to allow members to make up the bits that hold the little circuit in place, and contrive a mount with some lead shielding to arrange that the smoke detector sources point at the (stainless?) or whatever, so that what comes out hits the photodiode. If one trawls the thread looking for CAD pictures, you see some concepts, and look more, you come across pictures of Mark's experimental test setup.
The other part in there is a little computing board. Teensy, or Raspberry Pi, or whatever. The software to go in it will be provided, at this site, possibly with some arrangement to ensure it is not all simply stolen to appear somewhere as a product. I expect there will be a new thread, much shorter, where we set out what is needed, and start asking members how they want to proceed.
One idea is that the internal little computer makes a web page with the application on it, and all one needs is a smartphone or computer within network range, to simply start using it. That could be Bluetooth or WiFi or USB. The hope is that nobody needs to get much entangled with electronics build any much more than kids presently do at school.
We are not there yet. I very much want to get back into this project, as soon as my new living arrangements and house changes allow. That said, all pieces of the theory, and subsequent tryouts of proof of concept in experimental hookups have so far been OK. Mark
@homebrewed has been a hero about proving that. I am completely convinced that it should work. I would not have bought so many bits, nor put in so much design effort, had I ever thought we were getting into marginal territory!
Expect that HM members who want one will have to machine up some bits to a plan, add in a PCB and wire up to 5V power, and find it affordable. That is the concept that drives pretty much all of my design choices!
