Convert standard Geiger counter to RNG
github.com
Convert standard Geiger counter to RNG
1–10 of 42 posts
Re: Convert standard Geiger counter to RNG
#2Have you tested how good the random numbers are?
I think they should be good, if the interval between clicks is much larger than the interval for the counter, but I may be missing something. Also, some source emit two particles and I don't know if there are interesting cascades of decompositions.
If two consecutive clicks are close enought, I expect an uneven distribution on increasing secuances like 13478AC023489BC...
Also, for very high click rates I expect missing double clicks.
Re: Convert standard Geiger counter to RNG
#3Have you tested how good the random numbers are? I think they should be good, if the interval between clicks is much larger than the interval for the counter, but I may be missing something. Also, some source emit two particles and I don't know if there are interesting cascades of decompositions. If two consecutive clicks are close enought, I expect an uneven distribution on increasing secuances like 13478AC023489BC.…
Edit: removed previous post.
The increment happens as fast as the clock allows, which means any reasonable rate is much more than the cycle time. It delays 250us once it hears a click.
I'm not quite sure why we bother with resetting the counter to 0 when it hears a click though.
Re: Convert standard Geiger counter to RNG
#4Have you tested how good the random numbers are? I think they should be good, if the interval between clicks is much larger than the interval for the counter, but I may be missing something. Also, some source emit two particles and I don't know if there are interesting cascades of decompositions. If two consecutive clicks are close enought, I expect an uneven distribution on increasing secuances like 13478AC023489BC.…
The linked previous project does:
https://github.com/gbonacini/nuclear_random_number_generator
"I tested the randomness both testing the bytes and the single bits in the binary file created from the ASCII file from the appliance console ( see Appendix here or test directory for full result text).
Accordingly with ENT man page: "If the percentage is greater than 99% or less than 1%, the sequence is almost certainly not random. If the percentage is between 99% and 95% or between 1% and 5%, the sequence is suspect. Percentages between 90% and 95% and 5% and 10% indicate the sequence is “almost suspect”", so having 85.17 percent in the bytes test and 60.52 percent in the bits test should be fine."
Entropy = 7.998386 bits per byte.
Value Char Occurrences Fraction 0 413451 0.500284 1 412981 0.499716
Total: 826432 1.000000
Entropy = 1.000000 bits per bit.
Re: Convert standard Geiger counter to RNG
#5Have you tested how good the random numbers are? I think they should be good, if the interval between clicks is much larger than the interval for the counter, but I may be missing something. Also, some source emit two particles and I don't know if there are interesting cascades of decompositions. If two consecutive clicks are close enought, I expect an uneven distribution on increasing secuances like 13478AC023489BC.…
The source of radiation surely makes a difference.
Directing the sensor at a small point source makes clustering higher than if pointing it up into space [0] and receiving the "planar wave" background radiation of the Universe.
I took a while to figure this out when measuring the audio clicks and crackles from fire. I expect similar statistics to apply on a nuclear level (physicists please correct me). Within small, local sources common effects can be linked to common instigators. In other words events beget events. So a local variation in some variable sets off a bunch of related things [1].
As you sum this over an ever larger number of suitably decoupled sources, the central limit theorem starts to apply and what was bad uniform/even distribution becomes good Gaussian. In practice you need more than the theoretical >12 sources, but once you approach a few hundred uncorrelated sources the bell curve gets pretty good.
[0] probably assume the sky/space is an infinite number of sources all at very large distances.
[1] In the (dangerous) limit imagine a near critical mass of Uranium emitting bursts of chain cascades.
Re: Convert standard Geiger counter to RNG
#6Have you tested how good the random numbers are? I think they should be good, if the interval between clicks is much larger than the interval for the counter, but I may be missing something. Also, some source emit two particles and I don't know if there are interesting cascades of decompositions. If two consecutive clicks are close enought, I expect an uneven distribution on increasing secuances like 13478AC023489BC.…
The source of radiation surely makes a difference. Directing the sensor at a small point source makes clustering higher than if pointing it up into space [0] and receiving the "planar wave" background radiation of the Universe. I took a while to figure this out when measuring the audio clicks and crackles from fire. I expect similar statistics to apply on a nuclear level (physicists please correct me). Within small,…
No this is all wrong. Fire crackles clearly depend on state. Nuclear decay is memoryless; decays are independent events.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_decay#Mathematic...
> theoretical >12 sources
What?
Re: Convert standard Geiger counter to RNG
#7[deleted]
Re: Convert standard Geiger counter to RNG
#8https://www.fourmilab.ch/hotbits/how3.html is one algorithm I've seen before.
I'm just wondering with a very active source with this algorithm, could you potentially get a sequence of 0 - 15 being generated? (I could well be misunderstanding)
If a 'pulse' of activity from the source was detected at each interval
Re: Convert standard Geiger counter to RNG
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
The source of radiation surely makes a difference. Directing the sensor at a small point source makes clustering higher than if pointing it up into space [0] and receiving the "planar wave" background radiation of the Universe. I took a while to figure this out when measuring the audio clicks and crackles from fire. I expect similar statistics to apply on a nuclear level (physicists please correct me). Within small,…
No this is all wrong. Fire crackles clearly depend on state. Nuclear decay is memoryless; decays are independent events. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_decay#Mathematic... > theoretical >12 sources What?
Thanks for the correction on nuclear state. It's hard to imagine
anything having absolutely no state - but I guess a nucleus is not a
"thing" as such, even if surrounded by lots of similar non-things.
Does state not subsist in the total assembled mass in my example of
near-critical collection?
Re: Convert standard Geiger counter to RNG
#10I'm not a math or a CS expert, but I naively "designed" a PRNG which was simply repeatedly doing hash(random_seed+counter).
Obviously you have to keep random_seed secure, and use a hashing algorithm that does not have easy collisions, but other than that, is there any actual downside to this method?