Real Spectrum Analysis Goes Virtual

One of the hard things about electronics is that you can’t really see the working parts without some sort of tool. If you work on car engines, fashion swords, or sculpt clay, you can see with your unaided eye what’s going on. Electronic components are just abstract pieces and the …read more

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Illuminated 3D Printed Guitar is Ready to Rock

When we think of 3D printed parts for our projects, most of us imagine little bits like brackets and mounting plates. Perhaps the occasional printed project enclosure. But if you’ve got a big custom printer as [Joshendy] does, plus plenty of time, it opens up a whole new world of …read more

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DSP Spreadsheet: The Goertzel Algorithm is Fourier’s Simpler Cousin

You probably have at least a nodding familiarity with the Fourier transform, a mathematical process for transforming a time-domain signal into a frequency domain signal. In particular, for computers, we don’t really have a nice equation so we use the discrete version of the transform which takes a series of …read more

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Raspberry Pi Takes Control of Ham Radio

Today’s ham radio gear often has a facility for remote control, but they most often talk to a computer, not the operator. Hambone, on the other hand, acts like a ham radio robot, decoding TouchTone digits and taking action — for example, keying the radio and reading off the weather …read more

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Name that Unknown RF Signal with a Little FFT Magic

Time was once that the amateur radio bands were an aurally predictable place. Spinning the dial up and down the bands, one heard familiar sounds – the staccato of Morse, the [Donald Duck] of sideband voice transmissions, and the occasional flute-like warble of radioteletype signals. Now, the ham bands are …read more

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Analyzing CNC Tool Chatter with Audacity

When you’re operating a machine that’s powerful enough to tear a solid metal block to shards, it pays to be attentive to details. The angular momentum of the spindle of a modern CNC machine can be trouble if it gets unleashed the wrong way, which is why generations of machinists …read more

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Additive, Multi-Voice Synth Preserves Sounds, Too

For his final project in [Bruce Land]’s infamous microcontroller design class, [Mark] set out to make a decently-sized synth that sounds good. We think you’ll agree that he succeeded in spades. Don’t let those tiny buttons fool you, because it doesn’t sound like a toy.

Why does it sound so …read more

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Turning Sounds from a Flute Into Sheet Music

Composing music can be quite difficult – after all, you have to keep in mind all of the elements of musical theory, from time signature and key signature to the correct length for all of the notes. A team of students from Cornell University’s Designing with Microcontrollers class developed a …read more

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