RadiacodeGeiger Counter and Isotope Identifier with Smartphone App, Detector of Nuclear Radiation

Excellent sensitive beta and gamma pocket scintillation meter. However, if you use it in microsieverts per hour mode (rather than counts/second), beware (1) it responds to beta radiation so you get a misleadingly HIGH indication of deep tissue dose in typical situations where both beta and gamma are present (it is not an "energy compensated" gamma dose rate meter, so the detector is not shielded to mimic the shielding of soft beta and low energy gammas by the skin), and (2) even for high energy pure gamma emitters, it indicates free-air dose rates which are typically 50% higher than the shielded deep tissue/bone marrow dose rates. In summary, you will tend to get over-estimates of your actual deep tissue gamma dose, unless you correct for shielding by soft tissue. (So either use it in counts/second mode, or multiply dose equivalent readings by 2/3 to get accurate deep tissue dose in ~1MeV gamma ray energy fields.)Apart from that, it is a lightweight, senstitive gamma detector and spectrometer. All software and instructions are online. To turn on, hold the round button down. To turn off, you need to press the round button once to bring up the menu on the right edge of the screen, then scross down using the "bar" scroll switch (located between the screen and round button), select the on/off symbol (a line in a partial circle), and then press the round button!The rechargable 3.7v lithium ion battery is apparently glued inside the case, so eventually you will need to break it open to replace the battery (or use it permanently on USB power from an external USB power supply).

The ability to create spectrograms of unknown samples places this device at another level compared to simple Geiger-Muller tube devices. While small it is a sophisticated analysis instrument, but it is the software that makes it stand out. I'm using the Windows PC and also iOS app. The mobile phone app is just excellent for work in the field. I've knocked one star off because my example 103 is way out of calibration and I will need to re-calibrate it (fairly simple task requiring access to a standard such as Thorium 232, but the info on the Radiacode website is not a great deal of help).