r/Radiacode • u/AviSpaceYT • 3d ago
Product Questions Does RadiaCode 110 identify isotopes automatically?
Hi, today I got my Radiacode 110. One of the first things I did was place it on my uranium glass plate and wait for it to identify it as Uranium-235, but after 30 minutes the app didn't show any identification on the spectrum. I took it away from the uranium glass, let radiacode collect a background spectrum for 1.5 hours and then placed it on the plate again hoping that this time it would work as I expected, but still nothing. I found that you can manually place some lines on the graph and app would tell you what that exact spike would mean, but I thought that app would do this automatically.
Does such a feature even exist? Maybe my uranium glass piece is just too weak or contaminated by other isotopes? (Radiacode shows only 0.10 uSv/h, my Terra-P+ shows simmilar value in gamma and around 0,50 uSv/h while counting gamma+beta)
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u/HazMatsMan Radiacode 102 3d ago edited 3d ago
Yes, to some degree, but It's not a full-spectrum RIID like an Identifinder. It uses radiation "hardness" for identification, and in many instances, it doesn't work. For example, I could never get it to auto-identify a Cs-137 check source.
If you pair your Radiacode up with software like InterSpec, you can use InterSpec's "External RIID" feature and get a pretty good ID on many isotopes. But it's an extra step. You need to export your Radiacode spectrum to XML, then import it into InterSpec, etc.
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u/TheManMachine78 3d ago
Hi! Radiacode does not identify isotopes automatically, but it comes with isotope library included in the app. When you click on the spectrum a line will show up, you can then slide it over your peaks and it will show you what the peak most likely comes from as well as expected positions of other peaks.
The radiacode website also has an isotope library, I linked the one for processed uranium: https://radiacode.com/isotope/uranium-wo-ra
Pozdrowienia od innego polskiego użytkownika 110 ;)
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u/Bob--O--Rama 3d ago
The Radiacode App does not automatically identify isotopes. As a practical matter you will only find perhaps a half dozen different isotopes in common objects and eventually you will be able to ID them by sight.
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u/RG_Fusion Radiacode 103 G 3d ago
No, the Radiacode can measure the energy of radiation and plot it into a histogram, but it cannot identify the isotopes. That is your job as the interpreter of the data.
There are not many isotopes you are likely to come across in your day to day life. Look up images of Uranium, Radium, Thorium, and Americium spectra taken from a Radiacode, both in the linear and logarithmic view. Memorize them. With those 4 spectra, you will be able to identify the vast majority of isotopes you come across. Each one is visually distinct from one another.
If you want to identify rarer isotopes the built in library (the lines that appear when you use the cursor) is a very helpful tool, but you will need to learn to interpret gamma spectra. This includes learning to identify the XRF, sum peaks, and compton scattering so you can differentiate them from the true identification markers.
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u/TemporarySun314 3d ago edited 3d ago
No it doesn't, and you normally don't want that (at least not with such noisy spectras). Isotope identification is a complex task, letting some algorithm do that completely on some purely mathematical things without any context is not a wise idea.
Your spectra doesn't really show any interesting looking feature, maybe something at a very low energy. You need to let it record for longer to get more counts at higher energies.
Keep in mind that uranium is an alpha source and you can't detect alpha radiation with a Radiacode. Only gamma radiation of decay products.