A low cost PC based nuclear spectrometer

Abstract

Describes the development of a gamma radiation spectrometer based upon a personal computer. The current spectrometer market for both hardware instruments and their PC centred alternatives is in the main an expensive one. In addition to expense, many systems are not particularly versatile and incorporate inflexible software. In many cases, where a computer forms the system hub, additional instrumentation is required to produce a complete spectrometer. Some systems have to be specified ab initio and are not user reconfigurable. A gap was identified for an alternative to the above products which would be significantly cheaper yet still retain the performance required. Equally it was considered vitally important to introduce a significant degree of flexibility and user friendliness. It was not intended that any other additional instrumentation beyond the PC enclosure would be necessary.