I'd never owned a radiation detector before picking up the Radiacode 110. Geiger counters always seemed like niche tools for specific professions — not something a maker would casually throw in a parts drawer. But scintillation spectrometers have gotten small and affordable and I finally reached out to Radiacode to acquire a device. The Radiacode 110 is about the size of a chunky USB drive, and it does more than just click at you: real-time gamma spectrum visualization, isotope identification, and GPS-tagged radiation mapping when paired with a phone.
The 110 is the newest and most sensitive unit in the Radiacode lineup. The detector uses a CsI(Tl) crystal that pulls in 77 counts per second at 1 μSv/h for Cs-137 — roughly 2.5 times more sensitive than their entry-level 102 model. In practice, this means I can walk at a normal pace scanning an area instead of standing still waiting for statistics to accumulate. The FWHM resolution sits at 8.4% ±0.3%, which is solid for a pocket device. Temperature compensation from -20°C to +50°C keeps the spectrum stable whether I'm poking around a cold basement or out in the summer heat.
What surprised me most is the spectrum display. Point it at a thoriated welding rod, or a chunk of granite, and you can actually see the energy peaks on the histogram — and figure out what isotopes you're looking at.
The mobile app handles this better than the onboard screen, laying out the spectrum with isotope markers and letting you export data for later analysis. Search mode cranks up the update rate for hunting point sources, with audio feedback through your phone so you can keep your eyes on what you're doing. There's even a spectrogram feature that records how the spectrum evolves over time, which is handy for catching transient events you might otherwise miss.
Battery life is generous at around 290 hours from the 1500mAh cell, charging over USB-C. The device works standalone with its small monochrome display, but the Bluetooth connection to the Radiacode app is where the real utility lives — radiation tracks on Google Maps, cumulative dose logging, and shareable spectrum files. I've been walking around my house and neighborhood scanning things just to see what shows up. Spoiler: old camera lenses, vintage clocks, and certain ceramics are more interesting than you'd expect. The food testing mode is there too, designed for checking produce for contamination, though I haven't had occasion to use it seriously.
Due to not having any radioactive material laying around, I decided to test a standard ionization smoke detector. Point the Radiacode at the chamber and there it is: a clean 59.5 keV peak from Americium-241, the tiny radioactive source that ionizes air to detect smoke particles. The device nailed the isotope ID instantly. It's a minuscule amount of activity — about 1 microcurie — but seeing that distinctive low-energy gamma line appear on the spectrum display makes the physics tangible in a way that reading about it never did.
On a road trip through the mountains, I left the Radiacode running in search mode while driving through a long tunnel bored through granite. The dose rate climbed noticeably (up to double at times!) as we went deeper — natural background radiation from uranium and thorium decay chains in the surrounding rock. Nothing dangerous, just the earth being slightly more radioactive than open air. The GPS logging captured the whole traverse, showing the radiation bump correlating perfectly with the tunnel's path through the mountain. It's the kind of incidental discovery that makes you want to take the detector everywhere.
At $329, the Radiacode 110 is a great price for curious citizen scientists, but it's remarkably capable for what fits in your pocket. If you want to know *what* radiation is there, see the spectrum, and log it with GPS coordinates, this is about as good as it gets without stepping up to benchtop equipment. The Radiacode community on Discord and Reddit is active, and there's a shared spectrum library if you want to compare your findings with others. As a first radiation detector, it's turned into one of those tools I didn't know I wanted until I had it.
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Colonel Panic
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