Ormarion - 28-8-2021 at 08:30
Hey, i got some time ago a old gamma spectrometer wich come from Oakridge national laboratory apparently, problem is that i am not able to get a
correct spectrum on my computer.
I tried on different sources and the result was always the same, a big spike at 200 kEV
I use a ludlum gamma scintillation probe running on 900V, if i am right it's a 44-2 model (the label is damaged)
The spectrometer by itself seem to work fine, the number of count on screen is accurate
For the software i use thermino on my new gaming computer, i think it could come from it cause i don't know if the sound card is good for that, my old
computer gave the same result
I use the microphone input in theremino
On the other side i had to make a DIY connection by cutting the ludlum cable and adding a second BNC output so i can connect it to the spectrometer
(wasn't able to find and adapter or an other cable online)
The sources i tested the counter on were Ra226, Cs137 and Am241
If anyone have an idea about how i could make it work it would be lovely to share
[Edited on 28-8-2021 by Ormarion]
DokterChaos - 26-9-2021 at 01:26
can you read the signal with an oscilloscope?
stamasd - 26-9-2021 at 06:09
Microphone inputs are not good for spectroscopy software, they tend to distort the signals to the point of making them useless. Use a line input
instead.
Also try a better piece of software called PRA: https://www.gammaspectacular.com/blue/software-downloads/pra... It works for me much better than Theremino. It's tedious to setup correctly
though. The Theremino software makes a great deal of guessing and simplifications which usually result in prettier pictures, but can degrade the data.
The best way to get the signal into a computer for analysis is to use an external USB sound card - not the cheap Chinese ones, but a high-end card
that can do 96- or 192-kHz sampling. I use a Behringer UMC204. It's expensive but it works great.
https://www.behringer.com/product.html?modelCode=P0BK0
Its smaller brother the UMC202 should work fine as well, and it;s cheaper - especially if you don't care about the extra audio inputs and MIDI
features of the 204.
[Edited on 26-9-2021 by stamasd]