Collaborate Disseminate
As a game concept, Tetris gave humanity nearly four solid decades of engagement, but with the possibility for only seven possible puzzle pieces it might seem a little bit limiting. …read more Continue reading Tetris Goes Full Circle
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
Continue reading DSP Spreadsheet: The Goertzel Algorithm is Fourier’s Simpler Cousin
If you ask most people to explain the Fourier series they will tell you how you can decompose any particular wave into a sum of sine waves. We’ve used that explanation before ourselves, and it is not incorrect. In fact, it is how Fourier first worked out his famous series. …read more
When it comes to mathematics, the average person can probably get through most of life well enough with just basic algebra. Some simple statistical concepts would be helpful, and a little calculus couldn’t hurt. But that leaves out a lot of interesting mathematical concepts that really do have applications in …read more
Continue reading Interactive Demo Shows the Power of Fourier Transforms
One of the nice things about living in the Internet age is that creating amazing simulations and animations is relatively simple today. [SmarterEveryDay] recently did a video that shows this off, discussing a blog post (which was in Turkish) to show how sine waves can add together to create arbitrary waveforms. You can see the English video, below.
We’ve seen similar things before, but if you haven’t you can really see how a point on a moving circle describes a sine wave. Through adding those waves, anything can then be done.
The original post’s author, [Doga] is a student at …read more
The Fourier transform underpins so much of our technological lives, in most cases probably without our realising it. The ability to mathematically split a waveform into its frequency components and vice versa underpins much of the field of digital signal processing, and DSP has become an essential part of many electronic devices we take for granted.
But while most of us will know what a Fourier transform is, fewer of us will know anything of how one works. They are a function called from a library rather than performed in themselves. Even when they are taught in schools or university …read more
Continue reading All The Stuff You Wished You Knew About Fourier Transforms But Were Afraid To Ask
Readers who were firmly on Team Nintendo in the early 2000’s or so can tell you that there was no accessory cooler for the Nintendo GameCube than the WaveBird. Previous attempts at wireless game controllers had generally either been sketchy third-party accessories or based around IR, and in both cases the end result was that the thing barely worked. The WaveBird on the other hand was not only an official product by Nintendo, but used 2.4 GHz to communicate with the system. Some concessions had to be made with the WaveBird; it lacked rumble, was a bit heavier than the …read more
If you’ve had the classic engineering education, you probably have a hazy recollection of someone talking about control theory. If you haven’t, you’ve probably at least heard of PID controllers and open loop vs closed loop control. If you don’t know about control theory or even if you just want a refresher, [Brian Douglas] has an excellent set of nearly 50 video lectures that will give you a great introduction to the topic. You can watch the first lecture, below.
You might think that control systems are only useful in electronics when you are trying to control a process like …read more
If you have about an hour to kill, you might want to check out [Shahriar’s] video about the Stanford Research SR530 lock in amplifier (see below). If you know what a lock in amplifier is, it is still a pretty interesting video and if you don’t know, then it really is a must see.
Most of the time, you think of an amplifier as just a circuit that makes a small signal bigger in some way — that is, increase the voltage or increase the current. But there are whole classes of amplifiers designed to reject noise and the lock …read more
It’s funny how creation and understanding interact. Sometimes the urge to create something comes from a new-found deep understanding of a concept, and sometimes the act of creation leads to that understanding. And sometimes creation and understanding are linked together in such a way as to lead in an entirely new direction, which is the story behind this plywood recreation of the Michelson Fourier analysis machine.
For those not familiar with this piece of computing history, it’s worth watching the videos in our article covering [Bill “The Engineer Guy” Hammack]’s discussion of this amazing early 20th-century analog computer. Those videos …read more
Continue reading Fourier Machine Mimics Michelson Original in Plywood
