Radiation: Radiacode
Added: 2024-04
Kismet can collect environmental radiation data for display and logging from the Radiacode Geiger counter.
The Radiacode is capable of reporting counts-per-second (CPS), dosage (sieverts), and an energy spectrogram which may be useful in identifying the elements involved.
!! WARNING !!!
Kismet interfaces with environmental sensors, including Geiger Counter / Radiation detection devices because they are interesting. NEVER rely on the radiation exposure data presented by Kismet for personal safety!
Always consult the documentation for your Geiger counter. Different Geiger counter hardware is sensitive to different energy levels of radiation.
The location of your detector, the type of detection hardware, and the speed at which you are travelling can all impact
Compiling Radiacode support
Radiacode support in Kismet requires libUSB. The Radiacode sources will be compiled when libUSB is available at configure time.
Radiacode sources
The Radiacode device is identified radiacode-usb-#; for a single Radiacode it can be identified simply as radiacode-usb-0:
kismet -c radiacode-usb-0:name=radiacode
If using multiple Radiacode devices, they can be specified either in the order they were enumerated by the system, (radiacode-usb-0, radiacode-usb-1, etc) or by the USB path based on bus and port number (radiacode-usb-1-8 for example). Please note that the USB path identification may be subject to change if USB devices are moved, new devices added, etc.
For finding the USB location, consult the output of kismet_cap_radiacode_usb --list.
Kismet will automatically list Radiacode devices in the datasources list.
Supported hardware
The Radiacode source requires the Radiacode Geiger counter hardware, connected via USB.
The Radiacode is a modern Geiger counter which can report counts per second and dosage rates.
Viewing
Realtime radiation data can be viewed in the Web UI in the Radiation panel, or enabled in the top status bar via the Settings panel.
Logging
Radiation data is logged in the kismetdb log as JSON records in the snapshots and data tables. Once development is complete, it will be logged in pcapng as a custom packet block.
Stability
The Radiacode hardware appears to have a slightly fragile USB implementation. While typically this is not a problem, on some occaisons, initializing the device over USB can cause the USB implementation on the Radiacode to crash.
If this happens, the Radiacode will no longer respond on USB; to fix this, disconnect the Radiacode from USB, power the device off using the buttons and LCD interface, then power it back on and connect to USB again.
Radiacode source parameters
Naming and description options
All data sources accept the common naming and description options.