Supercon 2024: Using An Oscilloscope To Peek Below The Noise Floor

May 28, 2025 by Lewin Day 7 Comments

When you’re hunting for a signal with your oscilloscope, the stronger it is, the better. If it’s weak, you might struggle to tease it out from other interference, or even from the noise floor itself. You might wish that you were looking for something more obvious rather than the electromagnetic equivalent of a needle in a haystack.

Finding hidden signals below the noise floor may be a challenge, but it needn’t be an insurmountable one. James Rowley and Mark Omo came to the 2024 Hackaday Superconference to tell us how to achieve this with the magic of lock-in amplifiers.

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Analog Tape Playing Glove

March 30, 2010 by Mike Szczys 14 Comments

The magnetic tape found in audio cassettes can be fun to play with. This installation, called Signal to Noise, relocates the heads from cassette players to the tips of your fingers in the form of a glove. An accompanying wall has vertical strips of tape which you run your fingertips along in order to play back the stored audio. Get the speed right and you can make out what’s on the tapes. Move back and forth and you’ll be scratching like the worst of DJs.

If this were teamed up with a Melloman it would make for quite a performance. See and hear this curious device after the break.

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