Oatley Electronics Australia's Kick-Ass Contribution To Civil Defense 40 Years Later For The lM174A/PD

The incredible IM174A/PD uses an ionization chamber instead of a Geiger-Muller tube, meaning detection takes place through analog measurement of statically charged surfaces. This also means that the devices are similar to the electronics you saw in Fallout 3 - they have an almost infinite shelf life. Built of solid, sealed metal with analog based parts, they are not only immune to EMP but also to most shock, vibration and humidity changes. Geiger tubes change over the years and need to be recalibrated. The IM179A is similar to the Cresson-Kearny fallout meter in that it is automatically calibrated by the laws that govern electrical charges.

I have collected many of them over the years with the intention of getting around to building a modified battery for them to replace their original batteries which are now extinct and no longer manufactured. To this end I have also collected enormous amounts of technical documents on .PDF and in JPG diagrams so I'd have the specs necessary to accomplish this daunting task. I have so many jobs like this in my buffer it would almost certainly have been a long time before I got around to it. I actually have two of these sitting on the top shelf of the comms desk in Firehold Bravo where I put them six years ago.

Oatley Electronics is another little easter egg we have here in Australia in addition to Dontronics. They never fail to impress with strange, offbeat and retro surplus. They are always contributing kits for Silicon Chip Magazine and then selling them off their site. They have supplied me with innumerable trinkets over the years I have cherished like DC motors for vertical axis wind turbines, ozone generators, offbeat sensors and unusual hard-to-find items which have proved to be better than anything you could buy manufactured in recent times.

You can imagine my amazement this month when Oatley knocked the ball out of the park by not only discovering a vast supply of mint condition, pristine IM179As in a warehouse where they have been sitting the past forty years ... but then created their own market for the devices by figuring out how to construct a clever kit to replace the batteries, overcoming one of the biggest obstacles to their retrofitting for modern day Vaults!!

I almost broke a finger ordering three more last night from them. If you cannot wait like me, the battery kit is described explicitly in the PDF document at that link. It's very simple and most people could build it within an hour or so if they have the parts. It also looks to me like the basic principles for the battery kit would work with a wide assortment of substitution parts, possibly keeping this device running for another 40 years well into and through the worst part of the Apocalypse.

You'll excuse me, I have to go and change my underwear. I strongly advise you to order one of these babies if you have not acquired one already. It's the coolest development since hard candy in tins for Civil Defense and possibly the most useful retrofit of a radiation device I have ever seen.

Now all we need is for somebody out there to figure out how to make this into a digitally integrated device by serial cable or I2C link and we'll all have an EMP proof super radiation detector for Vault-OS that will never break down and never become irrelevant. I might take a stab at it, I have had some ideas looking at the original technical specifications. My idea was to use a BASIC stamp to run a POT or RTIME over the meter terminals and figure out what the range was of corresponding voltage.