A little light reading means something different to us than it does to [Hamster]. He’s been making his way through a book called The Scientist and Engineer’s Guide to Digital Signal Processing written by [Steven W. Smith, Ph.D]. Being the hacker type, a million different uses for the newfound knowledge popped to mind. But as a sanity check he decided to focus on a useful proof of concept first. He’s come up with a way to filter out the mains hum from Analog to Digital Converter samples.

Mains hum is all around us; produced by the alternating current in the power grid that runs our modern lives. It’s a type of interference that can be quite problematic, which is on reason why we see EMF sensor projects from time to time. Now you can filter that ambient interference from your projects which take readings from an ADC. This would be quite useful for applications which measuring teeny signals, like ECG hacks.

[Hamster] did a pretty good job of presenting his demonstration for the uninitiated. He even provides examples for Arduino or FPGA projects.