The Pocket Geiger is an accessory for the iPhone and it works in tandem with the accompanying app. You connect it to your iDevice, load the app, and let it use its eight photodiode sensors to detect nearby radiation. This way, you can know whether or not you’re in the safe zone.

As an added public precaution, the app is designed to upload your readings to a central database. The readings are then aggregated by Radiation Watch and collectively displayed on a map. Again, this makes it easier for you to know where it’s safe and where it’s not. Sadly, the map is only visible to the over 10,000 members. This really should be public knowledge.

The entry-level Pocket Geiger costs $46. The Pokega Type2–which runs off the iPhone’s power rather than relying on its own dedicated battery–sells for $65.

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Japanese mobile carrier DoCoMo, has launched three smartphone smart jackets which will probably never see the light of day and are so gigantic it would seem to be quite useless in today’s compact portable on the go culture and should probably be called smartphone parkas.

The first addon measures your body mass index and muscle ratio via four electrodes on the sides combined with your personal data like age, sex, weight, height, etc. You can also store your friends and family’s statistics and compare them. The last time I saw this technology it was in my local dollar store.

The second one is designed for women, it measures UV rays to let you know where and when it’s safest to get a tan. It also works as a breath analyzer, measuring the alcohol units in your breath, but also checks to see if you need to chew some minty gum before you talk to someone. First of all, any UV during direct sunlight is going to be bad. If you’re wearing sunscreen then really, you’re just killing yourself faster.

The last one may be only one worth releasing to the public, especially in Japan – it measures radiation in the air by using a semi-conductor sensor. How accurate it is, how often it needs to be calibrated, and how expensive it will be is still unknown. Way to go DoCoMo.

The post DoCoMo Goes Crazy with BMI, UV, Breath Analyzer and Radiation Detection Smartphone ‘Jackets’ appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Following the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster earlier this year, the world has been much more on edge about radiation levels and other related risks. Wouldn’t it be useful if you could measure radiation without some super expensive industrial equipment? Scosche thinks so and that’s why it has announced the RDTX portable radiation detector.

This radiation detector effectively works like a dongle with your iPod or iPhone and it works in tandem with the related radTEST iOS app. You can use it to detect radiation levels in the nearby area and it accurately detects gamma radiation above 120keV within +/- 10% accuracy. That’s not quite as good as the more expensive pro version, but that’s still pretty darn accurate.

Just like how you would with Speedtest, you can use the radTEST app to share your radiation results with friends via Facebook, Twitter, and Google Maps. You can see how this would be very useful in disaster situations, as up to the moment data can be posted by all the iUsers in the area who have a RDTX device.

For now, the Scosche RDTX is a Japan-only product and it sells for ¥21,000.

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Radiation is poisoning is no laughing matter. Microsoft technical program manager Fabien Royer speaks from experience, seeing how he was in France during the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. Now that we are looking at the Fukashima plant, Royer has taken matters into his own hands and build a Geiger counter.

But this is no ordinary DIY Geiger counter (is there even such a thing?), since it’s a Twitter-enabled DIY Geiger counter. Put together during Royer’s free time, the DIY project makes use of a Netduino Plus kit too. Put it all together and you have a tweeting radiation detection system.

If you’re thinking that the US government is pulling the wool over our eyes regarding radiation from the Fukashima Nuclear Plant in Japan, you might want to hobble together one of these for your own home too. The extensive tutorial is going to be overwhelming for most, though, so you might just want to follow the original’s Twitter account instead.

The post The DIY Geiger Counter That Automatically Tweets Its Readings appeared first on Mobile Magazine.