@@Marin3r101 The mind that solved that reverse engineering problem by focusing on cause and effect while dismissing the trivial would not waste time itemizing every component.
I love the way Ben is so matter of fact and modest when he's one of the smartest guys on TH-cam. He talks about figuring this out like he's just worked out the defrost setting on his toaster. Such a refreshing change to all the "empty barrels". Love this channel!
"Defrost setting on a toaster"! That's my new Headlight Fluid! And yeah, Ben is the master of understatement. When he says "and that was kind of tricky to figure out", I know it's something that would be not just unsolvable, but even impenetrable to a "mere mortal."
@@huaahhggg9507 Yeah, good old Windows! It's like a Ford Pinto, eventually it's going to blow up spectacularly, with you inside of it. th-cam.com/video/yX8yrOAjfKM/w-d-xo.html
I'm not sure if they skimp on the programmers salary or what, but enterprise grade software is a meme at this point, and often the most important machines using the shietest software, sometimes I wonder, how did this bad software not kill someone before
Those plant time lapses are sensational. This should be submitted to NatGeo and and whatever major botanical publications exist, because I'm sure they'd be amazed.
@@AustinThomasPhD You sure this comment won't get buried here? Maybe post it one level up or as a reply to @Applied Science . Sounds interesting, though!
When was working on radiotherapy software 15 years ago I remember one such panel was $150k+. They seem much more 'affordable' now with one less zero at the end. A good catch you got there. I'm wondering how heavily the phosphorous layer is bonded and if such a panel could also be used for a very sensitive telescope
the scintillator might be bonded pretty well.. some manufacturers grow the cesium iodide crystals directly on the TFT glass in a hermetically sealed encasement. the crystal to photodiode coupling is one of the biggest determining factors for image quality (and price)
This DXR250C (I believe, but it might be a U SKU) is around there. The newer versions are just as expensive unfortunately. I support them at an NDT company and boy are they expensive haha
@@WhileTrueCode Thanks for the explanation. It seems pointless to even try. Maybe etching but then it would be just ruining a good x-ray panel. On the other hand if the bonding is a quality factor then a cheap panel might be easy to clear 😂
Why is it that as the price of the hardware goes up, the quality, features and usability of the software always seems to go down? Give me $150k and a BSP and *I* could write better software than that, and I'm one of the last software developers you want building your UI. (Maybe that's it: the big-ticket hardware is built by hardware developers, not software developers and they end up Dunning-Krugering the software? They literally can't tell the difference between usable software and the BS they shovel on the customer's head?)
I haven't watched it but I know it's the coolest thing in the world. Strap in-- we're about to go for a ride!!! Nobody does quality over quantity like this man.
Former GE Field Service engineer here. That is a GE Flashpad. I am absolutely amazed what you found out reverse engineering it. It's used on the XR220 mobile xray product line as well as the XR6x6 rooms. The bottom connector is used for plugging it into table/wallstand bucky tray for data transmission and for charging the battery. The battery port can also be used data transmission as well. Your channel is amazing. Please keep up the good work.
I've done enough of these kinds of things to *seriously* appreciate how much work goes into something like this. I know when you're working through that kind of uncharted territory you can spend dozens of hours just building a rig to test something that turns out to be a dead-end. There's so much work that goes into all those little details you can't even begin to cover in a 20 minute video. Really glad you succeeded and the result is spectacular. The camera lens animation is fantastic, I'd love to see it in a full resolution looping video so I can absorb every detail.
Thank you Amir. Counting child-windows may be of interest - maybe not relevant for this task however. To cludge automate industrial apps (Siemens LCT) I have counted the number of child-windows (using VB3) spawned to determine the right time to send the next sequence of keystrokes. Time taken for a child-window to spawn varied greatly in my use case and dependant on the network of the very remote devices and detecting when a child-window spawned ensured maximum thru put rather than coding for worst case. It tuned an ~ 60min task into a 1 minute setup and run and walk away task. (Also took me about 3 weeks to get to that point)
Love the timelapses! I'm also surprised by the teardown's lack of ingress protection, in the medical setting those are often placed under patients that are leaking fluids and in the industrial environment those are usually used in very dusty and often wet building environments, surprised how clean this unit was inside given that, I imagine this one is non-rugged intended for clean lab use? I’m impressed you were able to even obtain the software for the sensor, most medical devices end up as e-waste because you can’t get the software or physical licence dongle. I’ll also mention just be careful with those cheap SBM-20 Geiger counters, they’re useful for finding high energy radioisotopes but they come with a lot of measurement caveats, they’re not very sensitive to < 50 keV X-rays, are prone to reading 0 when saturated and CPM to dose conversions are only accurate for their calibrated source (usually Cs-137 or Co-60). However, you’re clearly taking good safety measures with remote triggering and such.
This device came with an additional outer carbon fiber enclosure for use in harsher environments, but I agree: I was also expecting more waterproofing, etc. Thankfully, Amir also supplied the software/laptop. Each instance is locked to the detector MAC, as well as the computer's MAC, and will only transfer images when both MACs are identified as source and receiver! I tried a few different ways of getting around this before obtaining the whole setup, and was not able to get anything out of the panel. I had originally been port scanning it with no detectable open ports from a MAC that was not whitelisted. Originally, I had planned to make a video about trying (achieving?) a way to make it work without the proprietary software. I should probably do it, since I now have the working setup, and can sniff the traffic, which I couldn't do before, and was ready to give up trying to randomly guess the protocol. I've seen the geiger counter saturate, but it takes *a lot* of radiation :)
"Today on applied science I'm going to show you how I repaired this giant industrial x-ray sensor and then used it to make time lapse and stop-motion animations". Oh you know, just your regular weekend project for this guy 😂 I absolutely love your content! So educational, informative, and entertaining!
He probably does stuff like this while waiting for parts for the Jupiter-probe he's building in his backyard. Seriously though, this guy is pure inspiration, from work methods, persistence and no small amount of humility. He is open about his screw-ups and how he overcame them.
What gorgeous time-lapses! Thanks for the work. It might be cool to see something metallic that strongly reflects x-rays. The scatter might be really pretty in time-lapse.
That kind of X-Ray sensor is in almost all modern X-Ray machines used in every hospital. Up until 15-20 years ago, we used a photographic plate for taking X-Ray images. The construction of the X-Ray plate is so rugged, avoiding any form of obsolescence, because any failure would be immensely expensive. Thank you for the video. Greetings, Anthony
I worked as a manager of GE medical repair and logistics for years. I wish I had access to all that equipment that needed minor repairs now. There are tons of these mostly functional equipment that is just sitting on shelves at a reasonable rate for the basic repair price that will never see the light of day again sadly. For medical reasons. It makes sense that it has to be 100% functional. But, for experimental reasons. There is no reason they can't declare it unusable for medical reasons and sell it to folks like you. This is awesome!
Those x-ray animations are some of the coolest things I've ever seen! I was an artist for a number of years and I was always thinking hard about internals and their movement when working with both organic and inorganic objects, so it was incredible to finally see those come to life in actuality instead of imagination.
20:06 lol, one of the hugest understatements in the history of the universe!...i bet significantly fewer than 1000 people on the whole of earth could do that troubleshooting and fixing. as always, utterly astounding work, much thanks.
i watch repair videos and it is not rare a problem that is more obscure than a macro object pushed off is fixed, dealing with obscure software is also pretty much required nowadays for a professional so not a big step to manipulating it (software)
Very interesting to see the tear down of a device we see in use in hospitals daily. In the hospital setting, these devices are the sensor part of portable x-ray machines. For example, to take a chest x-ray of a patient who can't get out of bed, the plate is slid between the patient and mattress and the the x-ray tube part of the machine is wheeled over the bed and the image taken. Before wireless connections became common place, the radiographer would take it back to the radiology department where the image would be downloaded off the device and loaded for viewing on the imaging software used in the hospital. Some of the connectors are probably there to ensure that there is manufacturing commonality so that it can be used with minimal modification across the different models of portable x-ray machines produced. The sensor plates are very robust and take an awful lot of abuse. They get drenched in everything from blood, vomit, urine and worse. These plates are used for static images. C-arm image intensifiers are much more powerful and can do both still images and live fluoroscopic imaging. Can you get hold of one for a tear down?
yeahh.. whenever we got an RMA for a cable swap or a glass swap... our guys wore gloves :D they were used to looking at crates upon crates of pristine equipment to prep them for shipping. but some of those RMA panels that came back "from the field" looked like they've been through six tours of vietnam
@@JohnDlugosz The turkey scan was indeed done on this channel. It would be interesting to see how much better he could make a 3D scanner with this new sensor.
I was thinking more for dimensional metrology instead of medical applications. Maybe be able to export point cloud data and analyze with a software like GOM, Volume Graphics, Calipso, etc.
Out of all the cool ideas and actions in this video I think the way you move the camera lens remotely with a stepper motor was the coolest. Brilliant even. You are criminally under subbed and far to many lazy people do not thumbs up this content.
@@evil-wombat Yes. What I appreciate a lot is the near total lack of gimmicks that appeal to the attention deficit. A minute long intro and incessant flashy video fading, (Irrelevant) stock footage and the repetition to eke out a 3minute video to 11 minutes compel me to play it at 1.75 speed to appreciate at least some of the substance. Here one can set the speed to 0.5 of normal in some interesting cases and it still ends too soon. Having the final frame remind to like or share is perfectly acceptable but spending airtime on it is not.
@@KallePihlajasaari unrelated- if you don't want to deal with the gimmicks/intros/outros/interaction reminders on the rest of TH-cam, I recommend an extension called SponsorBlock. It really raises the signal-to-noise ratio by skipping through a good amount of the pandering.
@@evil-wombat I look forward to a time when we can watch a "Viewers Digest" version of a video if we want that strips out all repetition, long gaps in dialogue and reduces the length of time spent of still images that are not part of the topic and spools video at 1.25 speed in general. The places where such cuts should be made would be crowd sourced and what would remain would be a tl,dw version that would only have the meat and potatoes with none of the dressing. If the topic was very interesting one could switch to the original format to enjoy the artistry of the publisher. Perhaps this SponsorBlock may evolve that way, I will have to go look. Thank you. It could
@@KallePihlajasaari sponsorblock is exactly that - the cut points are crowd sourced. It's amazing how quickly after a video is released, sponsorblock already has the cuts loaded for it. Sponsorblock has multiple types of cuts, intros, music, etc. So far I just have it set to skip sponsors and ads, and it makes a huge difference. I'm not sure if I need to turn on the other types of skips, or if people mostly just mark the actual sponsor bits and don't mark the other types, but it's just a big a breakthrough as adblock plus is for the rest of the internet.
How fortunate are we that you happen to have been born within the last couple of decades. If you had have boon born a couple of centuries ago, you probably would have spent your life plowing a field. Instead you where born in an era where you can utilise your intellect, and the connectivity is there for us all to appreciate it.
I worked in diagnostic imaging and unclear (nuclear) medicine at a high level 10 years ago... I fixed the confusers and displays for the radiologists but never got to the lower levels. I always wanted to rip one of those apart since the radiographers just roughly removed the panels from the x-ray machine and jammed them into a docking station to download the image data (probably through the mystery bottom connector) and was surprised they took such rough handling! Great to see inside one at last!!! Thank you for your unmissable content
7:40 This is actually a very common technique used on high voltage low frequency AC power supplies, particularly with electrostatic chucks used to hold silicon wafers in place within the process chamber of Ion Implanters. Quick side note: I think a future project could be Implanting your own dopant species into silicon wafers using ion acceleration and creating your own transistors. You could definitely use diffusion techniques with your quartz tube oven, but accelerating ions into silicon can definitely be done in your shop and may prove to be a challenging but interesting project!
When people think x-ray, they rarely ever mean video. I know it was stop motion but his is really amazing and beautiful. Easily the greatest science and engineering channel ever!
WOW! This is sincerely one of the most amazing things I've ever seen. And to think that you are doing this in your own garage, with your own research... You are an intellectual inspiration! Thank you for all your hard work over the years. You have reached an incredible level of exposition with this one, sir. I am so grateful for people like you!
I Love this video! One of the best uses of TH-cam videos I've ever seen!!! Blessings and Positive Ions to you, Amir (the donor of x-ray panel) and everyone who sees and appreciates the benefits of this video!!
This is awesome. I work on High bypass Turbofans in development and we can now X-ray engines at up to 24fps so we can look at turbine blade tip clearances. Reminds me a lot of that! Awesome stuff!
It amazes me to my Core how someone can process so much in One Brain. The sheer volume of prerequisite knowledge memories that must coordinate in the mind in order to not only comprehend, but create AND CONTROL these ultra complex mechanisms! Ben, You are certainly more human than human!
You should go on the Safety Third podcast with William Osman. They talk about you occasionally and it'd be great to hear your stories directly and how you think about safety.
@@Manboy133too William opened the X-ray head and used it on its open state, that makes "safety nerds" goes brrr. I don't remember him using a remote trigger and while Ben shielding is questionable, it's more safely secure and he probably setups and leaves. Also, different audiences and expectations has serious impact in how they react. My biggest pick with his video was the high voltage supply, while he has experience with high voltage, my experience says your "you never can be too careful" isn't careful enough. I did a not nice "treat" to call NRA if did used it again, funny enough Ben also got a visit from NRA, Thought Emporium called and got the NRA and Amazon attention while Cody's Lab probably gets a visit twice a year. If you had to ask me why, Well, Ben uses a documentation style and coat lab from time to time while covering very advanced topics. William does a more fun and educational style with focus on fun topics doing crazy and dangerous sometimes. So when William does a advance and infamously dangerous topic... Pitchforks rise.
Whenever I'm forced to deal with the unpleasantness of proprietary interfaces and weirdly designed products, I'll think back to the pain and suffering you had to go through to bring us this video and realize how easy I have it. Truly impressive work, great job.
Never saw this before! I went to Forestry College and Horticulture College and never did we see anything like this, I think it would be a neat thing to show in Plant Biology class.
Those time lapses were some of the most incredible, and beautiful demonstrations I've ever seen! It is kind of funny, with all the elaborate engineering and expensive components, the thing that crippled this equipment was basically a swizzle stick. 😂 Fortunately, it means you were able to get your hands on one (thanks Amir!) to share all this cool stuff.
The subject of the video is obviously very interesting and you've done an excellent job with it. What's more interesting for me though, is how you managed to troubleshoot the software problems. Honest question, how did you figure out it was the order and the right click -> close? What hell did you go through where you thought "Hey, maybe right click -> close is a possible solution"?
Yeah, I'm always torn between making hour-long videos with all the details, and trying to keep things lively at 20 minutes :) In this case, after running the timelapse sequence for several hours, the software would randomly fail, and when I came back the next day, I would see the program had to be restarted in order to get it working again. At some point, I was lucky enough to catch the failure in the act -- a modal dialog would pop up and indicate "failure to transfer image". If the dialog was ignored (as it would be by the mouse control script), the software would never regain itself, and no further images would be acquired, but upon the next frame acquisition, the dialog would disappear yet the whole software stack would remain in a non-working state! I got around this by always right-click and closing the "image acquisition" part of the program, which didn't cause a problem in the normal case, but also was sufficient to acknowledge the model dialog in the failure case... They should pay me for QA testing. There were many many other bizarre quirks -- my favorite: The ad-hoc WiFi password is hardcoded and printed in the user guide. The password is 26 1's. Yes, 1111111111... :)
regardless of the real reason here, i made once a similar "discovery", with no popping up windows involved. if you are desperate enough - which might be the case especially with input macros ran in a seemingly controlled environment - you find some interesting behaviors. it's just a "machinist's trick" like regmon-ing or filemon-ing what happens to get to the root of some more or less irrelevant software issue. this was the first ever part of any of these vids where i said: well, i could have maybe done this myself. not much but honest.
Image plate detectors like the one you have are still used at synchrotrons for doing x-ray diffraction and tomography experiments. It is amazing how sensitive they are. We have to correct for sensitivity of pixels within each detector strip because of the difference in the length of the electrical path length to the ADC leads to small differences in x-ray counting time. If you are curious about trying to set up a laue diffractometer using your detector send me a message and I would be glad to help.
There are times where I think I'm clever, slick, reasonably intelligent.. Then I watch your videos and realize I have an entire lifetime of learning left to do.
I wonder if the root membranes actively block or take up different salts, and therefore actively took the water out of the solution leaving most of the KI behind?
Please please make more videos on the camera lenses like this ❤️ If you put it on #Shorts it's guaranteed to go viral at some point. I'd love to see multiple different lenses zooming and focusing, with more time to visually figure out what's going on 😊
It was a bit of a shock to see you get a DXR250 for so little. That's a generous gift! Always fun to see them show up in the wild. Listening to someone not familiar with them reverse engineer that and getting it to work with Rhytm RT was super neat!
Tremendous respect for all of the time consuming minutia "that doesn't make it into a TH-cam video." Particularly satisfying to see all the problem solving produce such fascinating imagery. Well done.
Plant takeup of KI from stem greater than from roots sounds right. Most plants roots surface membranes are reasonably good at keeping larger metals at low concentrations. An holy grail of soil remediation is a plant that aggressively concentrates heavier metals/halogens.
@RCM, Physics of botany question: Would you attribute that to the capillary action having an easier time with particle flow due to the cut stem exposing larger "inlets"? Or because the root system is generally keeping the chemical concentration/particulate at a minimum? Put another way, is it a particle size or the particle weight that the membrane affects? I grew up next to the largest superfund site in the US and it all boiled down to what to do with the water. I love the idea of growing giant radioactive trees that uptake all the heavy metals to save a watershed...
Great video! Has histogram stretching or contrast enhancement / sharpening been applied to these images? Working with CT image processing, I have learned that this can make a big difference in image quality.
There's ALWAYS A TON of things that can be learned by watching your videos... Several times in my life I've been in front of unknown devices like this one you get, but always get stuck at some point. Maybe my inexpertise, ignorance, or whatever... But I admire your capability to go on (with a bit of luck) into unknown fields. CONGRATULATIONS!
Suggestion: when you do this type of stuff, show the end result (in this case the timelapses) at the end of the video again. It puts context again to everything you explained, makes watching until the end more rewarding, and brings closure to the video. If it's too much stuff, show at least the better one.
Old timer medical X-ray Service engineer. Always fun to take X-rays of different things. Impressive to see that youare using a solid state detector! Yea pricey!
Noticed you didn't mention, what is the rough retail value of the detector device? Fantastic content otherwise please keep it up, you're a real asset to the world for sharing your knowledge and ingenuity here.
I did a quick check, it appears to be one of those things that if you are asking for the price you can't afford it. I not sure if it's the correct item, however there's on eBay going for 2000 dollars a Varian PAXSCAN4336R Digital Image Receptor X-ray Cassette and at 4000 dollars a Varian PaxScan4336X Digital Image Receptor 1 Both are used.
As absolutely beautiful as these time-lapse sequences are I must admit the real beauty for me came from the process that you tediously trudged through and so elegantly explained.
Hey Applied Science. I’m working on a simulation of plant growth, which involves water and sugar flow inside the plant as well as cell divisions bases on hormones - the whole shabang. It’s a tough problem especially without any real-life reference, so I was wondering if I could somehow get my hands on your video for some Python analysis. It would be truly helpful to know how water is transported throughout the plant, and I’d love to share my resulta with you!
Good proposal. If he does not see your request it is worth spending the penny on a Patreon subscription to send him mail that is more likely to be read.
Thank you for your great videos. These DR cartridges usually go into a slot on mobile xray machines to be used for mobile/emergency xrays, predominantly chest or abdomen. also, they usually have shock detectors which record any impact and log the time/date, to be able to track back to the operator.
Ah, it's my fav genius cutie! Another awesome episode! X-rays have always been a crowd pleaser. And this doesn't disappoint! Thanks Amir! Also, I think Cody took a Geiger counter on a plane in one of his videos.
That port is indeed for charging. When you see a portable X-ray machine being taken to a patients room, etc, you’ll notice they pull that imager out of a “pocket,” which is a charging station. The huge battery in the portable X-ray machine keeps the panel charged, and most places keep the X-ray machine itself plugged in between uses to keep the main battery charged as well. This was an amazing video, as I’ve always wanted to know what was inside one of these! Thank you for sharing! (And for me, the neatest animation was the camera… so many tiny intricate pieces moving precisely and in unison.. just. So. Cool!!). Again thanks for sharing, and I would love to see more animations like these!
That's a heck of a lot of work! Thanks for braving "integration hell" as Stuff Made Here is so fond of saying. Automating hardware and software that wasn't designed to be automated is always a challenge, so I applaud your resolve.
5:44 is an explanation so perfect it can be in understood in less than minute, and some youtubers would make a 15 minute video to say the exact same thing
I have a feeling ports are disabled by default. Has to be some sort of admin or debug console to enable them. Can you imagine being the person that damaged it? Could have been some simple bump on the corner of a table... and it's dead.
First off; Thank you, Amir :) This is amazing. I love the iodine trick to see the fluid movement in plants (so very logical, but I had not seen that before) And the camera zoom x-ray is beautiful as well. The sharpness and amount of detail you are able to get... While basically looking through an object.. - This technology never ceases to amaze me, even after I've known about it for ages, and seeing my own teeth time and time again on x-ray photos. I know there have been many amazing developments since then, all of which I can appreciate.. (Lidar mapping of landscapes, for instance; Being able to see ancient ruins through the jungle canopy, without actually disturbing anything. And uncovering so much more details you would otherwise have missed..) But for me, there's something special about being able to see through living organisms and mechanical devices. It's just one of those classical 'super hero' powers that speaks to my imagination... :)
This is awesome Ben! The efforts you put into these videos is incredible :) Also I think the batteries must have a I2C EEPROM in them for serial ID and to stop counterfeit/incompatible batteries to be used. You could remove the EEPROM from the dead battery and just hard wire it dead-bug style on the main board. Or better way dump the data from the EEPROM and flash a new chip.
I designed and built X-ray sensors about 10 years ago for digital imaging of teeth and skulls. One of the things you need to do with larger sensors is to adjust each pixel programmatically because there is no way to get perfect components. You also have to adjust for each sensor you connect because they have to be pieced together. Seeing one this large must have been really fun to produce.
9:41 if its written in c I'd bet there is an image acquisition function somewhere. Even if it isn't there is native code somewhere which you could theoretically pattern scan for. You could then do a dll injection and from that dll call the acquisition function directly. Then its just a matter of ipc to link this to your existing setup. helpful tools for reversing: detect it easy cheat engine ida pro (or other dis.) It would be a lot of work, but it would also be pretty cool. edit: also, I love this project your great
Yeah there's gotta be a DLL somewhere that does the heavy lifting in an abstract way. Maybe even an ActiveX control if they went that route. But since it's network controlled and spits out raws of a fixed size, I wonder what it would take to reverse-engineer the protocol and write your own software. With any luck, it doesn't require you to remotely bootstrap the FPGA over the network, though that wouldn't surprise me. Either way, Wireshark is your friend.
I'm curious as the why the whole thing is portable. If it was a part of a unit that came with an emitter then it would make sense, but it looks like you had to supply your own. Also, that shot of the camera was amazing. I'd be interested in seeing more mechanically complex machinery move under xray.
Modern XRay machine use this type of table as the "media" to capture. It is "portable" so doctor does not need to move patient, the emitter moves, and then this unit is placed in the "right location", and the say whisky.
Maybe it's a legacy implementation for older x-ray stations? The form factor is somehow similar to film cartilages that where in use before the digital age.
The plant is amazing already, but the camera X-ray blew me away, that's just fantastic! Thanks for creating the best content I know of! I always find it a bit sad that things are discarded so easily when they can be fixed just as easy. It almost makes me want to pay a visit to the local dump to browse for really expensive stuff.
I've seen these at the hospital I worked at a little while ago. They slot into a charger holster on a self contained x-ray station that can be rolled to the patient. Super cool to see one taken apart!
Two days ago I was siting in front of a panel very similar to this one, having my kidneys X-rayed. At the time I was very curious to know a lot more about how these panels work, particularly, how the imaging was preformed, the sensors involved, and how the data was transferred from the portable panel to the computer system. The hospital computer network is such that X-ray images are available between departments, and ever other hospitals, within minutes of being taken, as well as being stored as part of a permanent record, somewhere on a cloud server. I would be interested to know a little more about the WiFi interface. How the WiFi addressing and security protocol were set-up on the panel, presumably this was via some serial interface.
When i was x-rayed, an iodine based dye was injected into my blood stream, to make my organs visable, just like the plant. Fortunately wilting was not a side effect, unlike the poor plant.
Some of the most worthwhile content on any platform. I appreciate you putting these vids together. Thank you.
Without a doubt
@@DyslexicMitochondria your username made me click on your profile. Your channel is a hidden gem bro
@@tomhappening I subscribed to Dyslexic just now. I wish TH-cam were better at making channel suggestions!
@@AppliedScience you should tally all the components and see what the true cost is for the device.
@@Marin3r101 The mind that solved that reverse engineering problem by focusing on cause and effect while dismissing the trivial would not waste time itemizing every component.
I love the way Ben is so matter of fact and modest when he's one of the smartest guys on TH-cam. He talks about figuring this out like he's just worked out the defrost setting on his toaster. Such a refreshing change to all the "empty barrels". Love this channel!
"Defrost setting on a toaster"! That's my new Headlight Fluid!
And yeah, Ben is the master of understatement. When he says "and that was kind of tricky to figure out", I know it's something that would be not just unsolvable, but even impenetrable to a "mere mortal."
💯
That's the main reason I can't watch Mark Rober's videos; he acts like he's the smartest person alive.
Lol he talks about fixing a Scanning Electron Microscopes like those TH-cam videos explaining how to refill a Disposable Bic lighter.
@@ricoreyes6044 Mark Rober is science clickbait for people who made fun on the nerdy kids in High school.
The amount of effort put into these videos is truly astounding. An amazing experience every time.
"Might even say it's enterprise grade"
As a professional programmer, that sounds about right.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but this was a jab at enterprise grade software, correct?
Gave me a good laugh lol
@@huaahhggg9507 Yeah, good old Windows! It's like a Ford Pinto, eventually it's going to blow up spectacularly, with you inside of it. th-cam.com/video/yX8yrOAjfKM/w-d-xo.html
The contrast between the evident quality of the hardware and the software is telling.
I'm not sure if they skimp on the programmers salary or what, but enterprise grade software is a meme at this point, and often the most important machines using the shietest software, sometimes I wonder, how did this bad software not kill someone before
Those plant time lapses are sensational. This should be submitted to NatGeo and and whatever major botanical publications exist, because I'm sure they'd be amazed.
The casual demonstration of your impressive technical depth still surprises me after so many great videos.
Good gravy, this was awesome to watch!
Two of my favorite TH-camr’s!!
@@AustinThomasPhD You sure this comment won't get buried here? Maybe post it one level up or as a reply to @Applied Science . Sounds interesting, though!
When was working on radiotherapy software 15 years ago I remember one such panel was $150k+. They seem much more 'affordable' now with one less zero at the end. A good catch you got there. I'm wondering how heavily the phosphorous layer is bonded and if such a panel could also be used for a very sensitive telescope
the scintillator might be bonded pretty well.. some manufacturers grow the cesium iodide crystals directly on the TFT glass in a hermetically sealed encasement. the crystal to photodiode coupling is one of the biggest determining factors for image quality (and price)
A zero has not really dropped
This DXR250C (I believe, but it might be a U SKU) is around there. The newer versions are just as expensive unfortunately. I support them at an NDT company and boy are they expensive haha
@@WhileTrueCode Thanks for the explanation. It seems pointless to even try. Maybe etching but then it would be just ruining a good x-ray panel.
On the other hand if the bonding is a quality factor then a cheap panel might be easy to clear 😂
Why is it that as the price of the hardware goes up, the quality, features and usability of the software always seems to go down? Give me $150k and a BSP and *I* could write better software than that, and I'm one of the last software developers you want building your UI. (Maybe that's it: the big-ticket hardware is built by hardware developers, not software developers and they end up Dunning-Krugering the software? They literally can't tell the difference between usable software and the BS they shovel on the customer's head?)
I haven't watched it but I know it's the coolest thing in the world. Strap in-- we're about to go for a ride!!!
Nobody does quality over quantity like this man.
You were right, it is the coolest thing in the world. You're also right about Ben's quality of quantity. I love this channel.
Former GE Field Service engineer here. That is a GE Flashpad. I am absolutely amazed what you found out reverse engineering it. It's used on the XR220 mobile xray product line as well as the XR6x6 rooms. The bottom connector is used for plugging it into table/wallstand bucky tray for data transmission and for charging the battery. The battery port can also be used data transmission as well. Your channel is amazing. Please keep up the good work.
I've done enough of these kinds of things to *seriously* appreciate how much work goes into something like this.
I know when you're working through that kind of uncharted territory you can spend dozens of hours just building a rig to test something that turns out to be a dead-end. There's so much work that goes into all those little details you can't even begin to cover in a 20 minute video.
Really glad you succeeded and the result is spectacular. The camera lens animation is fantastic, I'd love to see it in a full resolution looping video so I can absorb every detail.
This is one of the most amazing things I’ve seen in a while. Do you realize that so many photographers and artists would kill to work with this thing?
Imagine OK Go filming a music video with it!
@@Dellpodder @Mitcham Tuell stated: "photographers and artists" not videographers! Photographers and artists are very patient people :)
@@SteveBrace what? videographers are artists
"Thank You Amir!" for providing Ben with this great teardown and experiment! I love the idea of showing the telephoto lens mechanism!
Thank you Amir. Counting child-windows may be of interest - maybe not relevant for this task however. To cludge automate industrial apps (Siemens LCT) I have counted the number of child-windows (using VB3) spawned to determine the right time to send the next sequence of keystrokes. Time taken for a child-window to spawn varied greatly in my use case and dependant on the network of the very remote devices and detecting when a child-window spawned ensured maximum thru put rather than coding for worst case. It tuned an ~ 60min task into a 1 minute setup and run and walk away task. (Also took me about 3 weeks to get to that point)
I want to be clever like you one day. Props for finding a workaround that would not even occur to most of us.
#softwaregore
I love that you used a tape spool to actuate the camera focus. That's just as cool as everything else in the video! Glad you included that clip
Love the timelapses!
I'm also surprised by the teardown's lack of ingress protection, in the medical setting those are often placed under patients that are leaking fluids and in the industrial environment those are usually used in very dusty and often wet building environments, surprised how clean this unit was inside given that, I imagine this one is non-rugged intended for clean lab use?
I’m impressed you were able to even obtain the software for the sensor, most medical devices end up as e-waste because you can’t get the software or physical licence dongle.
I’ll also mention just be careful with those cheap SBM-20 Geiger counters, they’re useful for finding high energy radioisotopes but they come with a lot of measurement caveats, they’re not very sensitive to < 50 keV X-rays, are prone to reading 0 when saturated and CPM to dose conversions are only accurate for their calibrated source (usually Cs-137 or Co-60). However, you’re clearly taking good safety measures with remote triggering and such.
This device came with an additional outer carbon fiber enclosure for use in harsher environments, but I agree: I was also expecting more waterproofing, etc. Thankfully, Amir also supplied the software/laptop. Each instance is locked to the detector MAC, as well as the computer's MAC, and will only transfer images when both MACs are identified as source and receiver! I tried a few different ways of getting around this before obtaining the whole setup, and was not able to get anything out of the panel. I had originally been port scanning it with no detectable open ports from a MAC that was not whitelisted. Originally, I had planned to make a video about trying (achieving?) a way to make it work without the proprietary software. I should probably do it, since I now have the working setup, and can sniff the traffic, which I couldn't do before, and was ready to give up trying to randomly guess the protocol. I've seen the geiger counter saturate, but it takes *a lot* of radiation :)
Every time I've seen these used on the wards, the operator uses a disposable plastic sleeve which keeps the detector clean and free of bodily fluids
@@madmikewood Yes they have covers they are supposed to use, but dont always.
@@AppliedScience Couldn't that open you up to some kind of IP lawsuit
@@MushookieMan Only if he sells it. For personal use, he can do whatever he wants to it so long as he didn't agree to a EULA.
"Today on applied science I'm going to show you how I repaired this giant industrial x-ray sensor and then used it to make time lapse and stop-motion animations".
Oh you know, just your regular weekend project for this guy 😂
I absolutely love your content! So educational, informative, and entertaining!
He probably does stuff like this while waiting for parts for the Jupiter-probe he's building in his backyard.
Seriously though, this guy is pure inspiration, from work methods, persistence and no small amount of humility. He is open about his screw-ups and how he overcame them.
The worst part of being a genius is that you are on you own in your projects and no one can give you an advice.. Your work is always one of the kind
What gorgeous time-lapses! Thanks for the work. It might be cool to see something metallic that strongly reflects x-rays. The scatter might be really pretty in time-lapse.
I don't think I've never seen Ben look so pleased at the beginning of the video as he does in this one. And that's a boon to us all, as viewers.
Their really is no other channel comparable to Applied Science. These videos are just the best.
That kind of X-Ray sensor is in almost all modern X-Ray machines used in every hospital. Up until 15-20 years ago, we used a photographic plate for taking X-Ray images.
The construction of the X-Ray plate is so rugged, avoiding any form of obsolescence, because any failure would be immensely expensive.
Thank you for the video.
Greetings,
Anthony
Great video! Its amazing how those tiny problems can hide from you... gave me flash backs LOL
Oh hey my favourite robot builder is here
I worked as a manager of GE medical repair and logistics for years. I wish I had access to all that equipment that needed minor repairs now. There are tons of these mostly functional equipment that is just sitting on shelves at a reasonable rate for the basic repair price that will never see the light of day again sadly. For medical reasons. It makes sense that it has to be 100% functional. But, for experimental reasons. There is no reason they can't declare it unusable for medical reasons and sell it to folks like you. This is awesome!
Just phenomenal - you've excelled again.
What about fungal growth through media? Or root growth.
Those x-ray animations are some of the coolest things I've ever seen! I was an artist for a number of years and I was always thinking hard about internals and their movement when working with both organic and inorganic objects, so it was incredible to finally see those come to life in actuality instead of imagination.
20:06 lol, one of the hugest understatements in the history of the universe!...i bet significantly fewer than 1000 people on the whole of earth could do that troubleshooting and fixing. as always, utterly astounding work, much thanks.
i watch repair videos and it is not rare a problem that is more obscure than a macro object pushed off is fixed, dealing with obscure software is also pretty much required nowadays for a professional so not a big step to manipulating it (software)
Very interesting to see the tear down of a device we see in use in hospitals daily. In the hospital setting, these devices are the sensor part of portable x-ray machines. For example, to take a chest x-ray of a patient who can't get out of bed, the plate is slid between the patient and mattress and the the x-ray tube part of the machine is wheeled over the bed and the image taken.
Before wireless connections became common place, the radiographer would take it back to the radiology department where the image would be downloaded off the device and loaded for viewing on the imaging software used in the hospital. Some of the connectors are probably there to ensure that there is manufacturing commonality so that it can be used with minimal modification across the different models of portable x-ray machines produced.
The sensor plates are very robust and take an awful lot of abuse. They get drenched in everything from blood, vomit, urine and worse. These plates are used for static images. C-arm image intensifiers are much more powerful and can do both still images and live fluoroscopic imaging. Can you get hold of one for a tear down?
yeahh.. whenever we got an RMA for a cable swap or a glass swap... our guys wore gloves :D they were used to looking at crates upon crates of pristine equipment to prep them for shipping. but some of those RMA panels that came back "from the field" looked like they've been through six tours of vietnam
Now it is time to set up a rotary stage and turn it into an xray CT. I would love to see you do some dimensional metrology with it!
I think he's done that, years ago, with his _first_ X-Ray tube.
(Or was it someone else? I remember it scanned a turkey.
@@JohnDlugosz The turkey scan was indeed done on this channel. It would be interesting to see how much better he could make a 3D scanner with this new sensor.
I was thinking more for dimensional metrology instead of medical applications. Maybe be able to export point cloud data and analyze with a software like GOM, Volume Graphics, Calipso, etc.
Very impressive variety of skills used to engineer this experiment.
Out of all the cool ideas and actions in this video I think the way you move the camera lens remotely with a stepper motor was the coolest. Brilliant even. You are criminally under subbed and far to many lazy people do not thumbs up this content.
I LOVE how none of these videos have any of that annoying "like share and subscribe" garbage that is killing the rest of TH-cam.
@@evil-wombat Yes. What I appreciate a lot is the near total lack of gimmicks that appeal to the attention deficit. A minute long intro and incessant flashy video fading, (Irrelevant) stock footage and the repetition to eke out a 3minute video to 11 minutes compel me to play it at 1.75 speed to appreciate at least some of the substance.
Here one can set the speed to 0.5 of normal in some interesting cases and it still ends too soon.
Having the final frame remind to like or share is perfectly acceptable but spending airtime on it is not.
@@KallePihlajasaari unrelated- if you don't want to deal with the gimmicks/intros/outros/interaction reminders on the rest of TH-cam, I recommend an extension called SponsorBlock. It really raises the signal-to-noise ratio by skipping through a good amount of the pandering.
@@evil-wombat I look forward to a time when we can watch a "Viewers Digest" version of a video if we want that strips out all repetition, long gaps in dialogue and reduces the length of time spent of still images that are not part of the topic and spools video at 1.25 speed in general.
The places where such cuts should be made would be crowd sourced and what would remain would be a tl,dw version that would only have the meat and potatoes with none of the dressing. If the topic was very interesting one could switch to the original format to enjoy the artistry of the publisher.
Perhaps this SponsorBlock may evolve that way, I will have to go look.
Thank you.
It could
@@KallePihlajasaari sponsorblock is exactly that - the cut points are crowd sourced. It's amazing how quickly after a video is released, sponsorblock already has the cuts loaded for it. Sponsorblock has multiple types of cuts, intros, music, etc. So far I just have it set to skip sponsors and ads, and it makes a huge difference. I'm not sure if I need to turn on the other types of skips, or if people mostly just mark the actual sponsor bits and don't mark the other types, but it's just a big a breakthrough as adblock plus is for the rest of the internet.
How fortunate are we that you happen to have been born within the last couple of decades. If you had have boon born a couple of centuries ago, you probably would have spent your life plowing a field. Instead you where born in an era where you can utilise your intellect, and the connectivity is there for us all to appreciate it.
I worked in diagnostic imaging and unclear (nuclear) medicine at a high level 10 years ago... I fixed the confusers and displays for the radiologists but never got to the lower levels. I always wanted to rip one of those apart since the radiographers just roughly removed the panels from the x-ray machine and jammed them into a docking station to download the image data (probably through the mystery bottom connector) and was surprised they took such rough handling! Great to see inside one at last!!! Thank you for your unmissable content
Gotta love proprietary hardware and software XD
Really cool seeing all the little hacks you did to get it to do what you wanted though.
GE now must hire Ben to fix their hardware and design better new one :)
More like hate it.
7:40 This is actually a very common technique used on high voltage low frequency AC power supplies, particularly with electrostatic chucks used to hold silicon wafers in place within the process chamber of Ion Implanters.
Quick side note: I think a future project could be Implanting your own dopant species into silicon wafers using ion acceleration and creating your own transistors. You could definitely use diffusion techniques with your quartz tube oven, but accelerating ions into silicon can definitely be done in your shop and may prove to be a challenging but interesting project!
A special round of applause for the casual genius of that stepper-to-lens coupling at 8:45 So simple, but perfectly solves the problem!
I really enjoyed this. But I’m not gonna lie, now I just want a full video of more things being xrayed. The camera was so cool!!
I agree. We need more x-ray videos.
When people think x-ray, they rarely ever mean video. I know it was stop motion but his is really amazing and beautiful. Easily the greatest science and engineering channel ever!
Your productivity level is off the charts, another amazing video wow thanks
WOW! This is sincerely one of the most amazing things I've ever seen. And to think that you are doing this in your own garage, with your own research... You are an intellectual inspiration!
Thank you for all your hard work over the years. You have reached an incredible level of exposition with this one, sir.
I am so grateful for people like you!
1:51 That stop motion capture of the camera lense is absolutely amazing!
I Love this video! One of the best uses of TH-cam videos I've ever seen!!!
Blessings and Positive Ions to you, Amir (the donor of x-ray panel) and everyone who sees and appreciates the benefits of this video!!
Always fascinating stuff, Ben!
This is awesome. I work on High bypass Turbofans in development and we can now X-ray engines at up to 24fps so we can look at turbine blade tip clearances. Reminds me a lot of that! Awesome stuff!
Wow! That's a huge accomplishment getting all that to work! Congratulations !
It amazes me to my Core how someone can process so much in One Brain. The sheer volume of prerequisite knowledge memories that must coordinate in the mind in order to not only comprehend, but create AND CONTROL these ultra complex mechanisms! Ben, You are certainly more human than human!
You should go on the Safety Third podcast with William Osman. They talk about you occasionally and it'd be great to hear your stories directly and how you think about safety.
Please do this. William seemingly got endless amounts of safety hate comments. Yet this video has close to none.
@@Manboy133too He got so many idiotic comments that it actually prompted him to stop making videos while he regains his sanity.
@@Manboy133too William opened the X-ray head and used it on its open state, that makes "safety nerds" goes brrr.
I don't remember him using a remote trigger and while Ben shielding is questionable, it's more safely secure and he probably setups and leaves.
Also, different audiences and expectations has serious impact in how they react.
My biggest pick with his video was the high voltage supply, while he has experience with high voltage, my experience says your "you never can be too careful" isn't careful enough.
I did a not nice "treat" to call NRA if did used it again, funny enough Ben also got a visit from NRA, Thought Emporium called and got the NRA and Amazon attention while Cody's Lab probably gets a visit twice a year.
If you had to ask me why, Well, Ben uses a documentation style and coat lab from time to time while covering very advanced topics.
William does a more fun and educational style with focus on fun topics doing crazy and dangerous sometimes.
So when William does a advance and infamously dangerous topic... Pitchforks rise.
Whenever I'm forced to deal with the unpleasantness of proprietary interfaces and weirdly designed products, I'll think back to the pain and suffering you had to go through to bring us this video and realize how easy I have it. Truly impressive work, great job.
Never saw this before! I went to Forestry College and Horticulture College and never did we see anything like this, I think it would be a neat thing to show in Plant Biology class.
Thank you, Amir!
Ben, I love your channel. You’re the adult’s Mr. Wizard.
Thanks Amir! Very generous to share with us.
When I watch your videos I enjoy seeing your passion and I glean the occasional crumb of knowledge from my range of understanding too...
Those time lapses were some of the most incredible, and beautiful demonstrations I've ever seen!
It is kind of funny, with all the elaborate engineering and expensive components, the thing that crippled this equipment was basically a swizzle stick. 😂
Fortunately, it means you were able to get your hands on one (thanks Amir!) to share all this cool stuff.
This is excellent work. The plant taking up water is of the quality of Harold Edgerton and Bernice Abbott's scientific photographs.
The subject of the video is obviously very interesting and you've done an excellent job with it.
What's more interesting for me though, is how you managed to troubleshoot the software problems. Honest question, how did you figure out it was the order and the right click -> close? What hell did you go through where you thought "Hey, maybe right click -> close is a possible solution"?
Yeah, I'm always torn between making hour-long videos with all the details, and trying to keep things lively at 20 minutes :) In this case, after running the timelapse sequence for several hours, the software would randomly fail, and when I came back the next day, I would see the program had to be restarted in order to get it working again. At some point, I was lucky enough to catch the failure in the act -- a modal dialog would pop up and indicate "failure to transfer image". If the dialog was ignored (as it would be by the mouse control script), the software would never regain itself, and no further images would be acquired, but upon the next frame acquisition, the dialog would disappear yet the whole software stack would remain in a non-working state! I got around this by always right-click and closing the "image acquisition" part of the program, which didn't cause a problem in the normal case, but also was sufficient to acknowledge the model dialog in the failure case... They should pay me for QA testing. There were many many other bizarre quirks -- my favorite: The ad-hoc WiFi password is hardcoded and printed in the user guide. The password is 26 1's. Yes, 1111111111... :)
@@AppliedScience QA hardware testers are a breed in extinction.
Ask me how I know ...
@Applied Science Yes, they should pay you for qa testing. Very interesting troubleshooting procedure. Thanks for answering!
regardless of the real reason here, i made once a similar "discovery", with no popping up windows involved. if you are desperate enough - which might be the case especially with input macros ran in a seemingly controlled environment - you find some interesting behaviors. it's just a "machinist's trick" like regmon-ing or filemon-ing what happens to get to the root of some more or less irrelevant software issue.
this was the first ever part of any of these vids where i said: well, i could have maybe done this myself. not much but honest.
@@AppliedScience fantastic work
you must be the most knowledgeable person Ive watched in the whole internet, truly epic what you can do in your garage.
Image plate detectors like the one you have are still used at synchrotrons for doing x-ray diffraction and tomography experiments. It is amazing how sensitive they are. We have to correct for sensitivity of pixels within each detector strip because of the difference in the length of the electrical path length to the ADC leads to small differences in x-ray counting time. If you are curious about trying to set up a laue diffractometer using your detector send me a message and I would be glad to help.
There are times where I think I'm clever, slick, reasonably intelligent.. Then I watch your videos and realize I have an entire lifetime of learning left to do.
I wonder if the root membranes actively block or take up different salts, and therefore actively took the water out of the solution leaving most of the KI behind?
The lens zoom warms the cockles of my heart.
Please please make more videos on the camera lenses like this ❤️
If you put it on #Shorts it's guaranteed to go viral at some point.
I'd love to see multiple different lenses zooming and focusing, with more time to visually figure out what's going on 😊
It was a bit of a shock to see you get a DXR250 for so little. That's a generous gift! Always fun to see them show up in the wild. Listening to someone not familiar with them reverse engineer that and getting it to work with Rhytm RT was super neat!
You Sir are a legend. Thank you for sharing and so simply explaining everything. Very interesting.
Well said
Tremendous respect for all of the time consuming minutia "that doesn't make it into a TH-cam video." Particularly satisfying to see all the problem solving produce such fascinating imagery. Well done.
I cant wait til those digital panels become cheap and easy to mass produce, the quality of those shots is amazing! Great video Ben!
this dude looks like someone who could talk about anything and I would be interested for hours.
Plant takeup of KI from stem greater than from roots sounds right. Most plants roots surface membranes are reasonably good at keeping larger metals at low concentrations. An holy grail of soil remediation is a plant that aggressively concentrates heavier metals/halogens.
@RCM, Physics of botany question: Would you attribute that to the capillary action having an easier time with particle flow due to the cut stem exposing larger "inlets"? Or because the root system is generally keeping the chemical concentration/particulate at a minimum? Put another way, is it a particle size or the particle weight that the membrane affects? I grew up next to the largest superfund site in the US and it all boiled down to what to do with the water. I love the idea of growing giant radioactive trees that uptake all the heavy metals to save a watershed...
@@codygoldhahn2680 membrane and associated microorganisms. Problem is concentration, otherwise we wind up with expensive biomass problem.
The tobacco plant is known to accumulate radionuclides.
That camera lens timelapse blew my mind, such an amazing footage.
Great video!
Has histogram stretching or contrast enhancement / sharpening been applied to these images? Working with CT image processing, I have learned that this can make a big difference in image quality.
There's ALWAYS A TON of things that can be learned by watching your videos... Several times in my life I've been in front of unknown devices like this one you get, but always get stuck at some point. Maybe my inexpertise, ignorance, or whatever... But I admire your capability to go on (with a bit of luck) into unknown fields. CONGRATULATIONS!
Time to watch this whole video and pretend to understand what he's saying. And you were right, I have not seen anything quite as amazing as this 1:50
I suspect you aren't the same Amir that sent him the x-ray setup?
@@nefariousyawn lol no but I got caught off guard when he said it
Your dog'ed determination, array and depth of talents and intellect always leaves me transfixed; just love your applied science.
Suggestion: when you do this type of stuff, show the end result (in this case the timelapses) at the end of the video again. It puts context again to everything you explained, makes watching until the end more rewarding, and brings closure to the video. If it's too much stuff, show at least the better one.
Old timer medical X-ray Service engineer. Always fun to take X-rays of different things. Impressive to see that youare using a solid state detector! Yea pricey!
Noticed you didn't mention, what is the rough retail value of the detector device? Fantastic content otherwise please keep it up, you're a real asset to the world for sharing your knowledge and ingenuity here.
I did a quick check, it appears to be one of those things that if you are asking for the price you can't afford it.
I not sure if it's the correct item, however there's on eBay going for 2000 dollars a Varian PAXSCAN4336R Digital Image Receptor X-ray Cassette
and at 4000 dollars a Varian PaxScan4336X Digital Image Receptor 1
Both are used.
Other comments mention figures in the range of 150-200K USD. I think that's probably more realistic than $4000.
As a radiologist, I found this absolutely fascinating. KUDOS!
I can't believe the things you come up with. Always amazing. Thanks.
As absolutely beautiful as these time-lapse sequences are I must admit the real beauty for me came from the process that you tediously trudged through and so elegantly explained.
Hey Applied Science. I’m working on a simulation of plant growth, which involves water and sugar flow inside the plant as well as cell divisions bases on hormones - the whole shabang. It’s a tough problem especially without any real-life reference, so I was wondering if I could somehow get my hands on your video for some Python analysis. It would be truly helpful to know how water is transported throughout the plant, and I’d love to share my resulta with you!
Good proposal. If he does not see your request it is worth spending the penny on a Patreon subscription to send him mail that is more likely to be read.
@@KallePihlajasaari that´s a really good idea and well worth the money. Everything he does is amazing!
Thank you for your great videos. These DR cartridges usually go into a slot on mobile xray machines to be used for mobile/emergency xrays, predominantly chest or abdomen.
also, they usually have shock detectors which record any impact and log the time/date, to be able to track back to the operator.
Ah, it's my fav genius cutie! Another awesome episode! X-rays have always been a crowd pleaser. And this doesn't disappoint!
Thanks Amir!
Also, I think Cody took a Geiger counter on a plane in one of his videos.
That port is indeed for charging. When you see a portable X-ray machine being taken to a patients room, etc, you’ll notice they pull that imager out of a “pocket,” which is a charging station. The huge battery in the portable X-ray machine keeps the panel charged, and most places keep the X-ray machine itself plugged in between uses to keep the main battery charged as well. This was an amazing video, as I’ve always wanted to know what was inside one of these! Thank you for sharing! (And for me, the neatest animation was the camera… so many tiny intricate pieces moving precisely and in unison.. just. So. Cool!!). Again thanks for sharing, and I would love to see more animations like these!
That's a heck of a lot of work! Thanks for braving "integration hell" as Stuff Made Here is so fond of saying. Automating hardware and software that wasn't designed to be automated is always a challenge, so I applaud your resolve.
WOW I've not seen this level of detail in an x-ray video before. That camera zoom and clock mechanism 🖐️
Amazing, you never fail to impress me. Thanks for your efforts on putting up these videos.
5:44 is an explanation so perfect it can be in understood in less than minute, and some youtubers would make a 15 minute video to say the exact same thing
I have a feeling ports are disabled by default. Has to be some sort of admin or debug console to enable them. Can you imagine being the person that damaged it? Could have been some simple bump on the corner of a table... and it's dead.
Guessing from the Gbit link there are some applications where it spends a lot of time docked that way.
First off; Thank you, Amir :)
This is amazing. I love the iodine trick to see the fluid movement in plants (so very logical, but I had not seen that before)
And the camera zoom x-ray is beautiful as well. The sharpness and amount of detail you are able to get... While basically looking through an object..
-
This technology never ceases to amaze me, even after I've known about it for ages, and seeing my own teeth time and time again on x-ray photos.
I know there have been many amazing developments since then, all of which I can appreciate..
(Lidar mapping of landscapes, for instance;
Being able to see ancient ruins through the jungle canopy, without actually disturbing anything.
And uncovering so much more details you would otherwise have missed..)
But for me, there's something special about being able to see through living organisms and mechanical devices.
It's just one of those classical 'super hero' powers that speaks to my imagination... :)
This is awesome Ben! The efforts you put into these videos is incredible :)
Also I think the batteries must have a I2C EEPROM in them for serial ID and to stop counterfeit/incompatible batteries to be used. You could remove the EEPROM from the dead battery and just hard wire it dead-bug style on the main board. Or better way dump the data from the EEPROM and flash a new chip.
I designed and built X-ray sensors about 10 years ago for digital imaging of teeth and skulls. One of the things you need to do with larger sensors is to adjust each pixel programmatically because there is no way to get perfect components. You also have to adjust for each sensor you connect because they have to be pieced together. Seeing one this large must have been really fun to produce.
9:41 if its written in c I'd bet there is an image acquisition function somewhere. Even if it isn't there is native code somewhere which you could theoretically pattern scan for. You could then do a dll injection and from that dll call the acquisition function directly. Then its just a matter of ipc to link this to your existing setup.
helpful tools for reversing:
detect it easy
cheat engine
ida pro (or other dis.)
It would be a lot of work, but it would also be pretty cool.
edit: also, I love this project your great
Yeah there's gotta be a DLL somewhere that does the heavy lifting in an abstract way. Maybe even an ActiveX control if they went that route. But since it's network controlled and spits out raws of a fixed size, I wonder what it would take to reverse-engineer the protocol and write your own software. With any luck, it doesn't require you to remotely bootstrap the FPGA over the network, though that wouldn't surprise me. Either way, Wireshark is your friend.
loved the high voltage coax connector. i always wondered how that'd work.
I'm curious as the why the whole thing is portable. If it was a part of a unit that came with an emitter then it would make sense, but it looks like you had to supply your own.
Also, that shot of the camera was amazing. I'd be interested in seeing more mechanically complex machinery move under xray.
I would think it is a portable sensor for use in emergency rooms where the patient cannot be moved because of their trauma.
You can buy from the same manufacturer x-ray emitters. They are even portable. Usually used to inspect pipelines.
I've seen vets at zoos use them to do in field x-rays to rule out having to put home under as and bringing to OR
Modern XRay machine use this type of table as the "media" to capture. It is "portable" so doctor does not need to move patient, the emitter moves, and then this unit is placed in the "right location", and the say whisky.
Maybe it's a legacy implementation for older x-ray stations? The form factor is somehow similar to film cartilages that where in use before the digital age.
The plant is amazing already, but the camera X-ray blew me away, that's just fantastic! Thanks for creating the best content I know of! I always find it a bit sad that things are discarded so easily when they can be fixed just as easy. It almost makes me want to pay a visit to the local dump to browse for really expensive stuff.
I cannot imagine any of us complaining that the video is too long!
I've seen these at the hospital I worked at a little while ago. They slot into a charger holster on a self contained x-ray station that can be rolled to the patient. Super cool to see one taken apart!
Two days ago I was siting in front of a panel very similar to this one, having my kidneys X-rayed. At the time I was very curious to know a lot more about how these panels work, particularly, how the imaging was preformed, the sensors involved, and how the data was transferred from the portable panel to the computer system.
The hospital computer network is such that X-ray images are available between departments, and ever other hospitals, within minutes of being taken, as well as being stored as part of a permanent record, somewhere on a cloud server.
I would be interested to know a little more about the WiFi interface. How the WiFi addressing and security protocol were set-up on the panel, presumably this was via some serial interface.
When i was x-rayed, an iodine based dye was injected into my blood stream, to make my organs visable, just like the plant. Fortunately wilting was not a side effect, unlike the poor plant.
Just the way you have the stepper motor hooked up to the camera focus at 8:51 is super clever!
Thank you Amir!
It helps to be smart, but what really helps is perseverance (that's something I often tell my students). Amazing video!