The new Pololu USB AVR Programmer is smaller and cheaper than our old programmer, and it has two awesome bonus features:
A TTL-level serial port that is on a separate COM port. Now you can program your AVR and have it send serial bytes back to you without having to close AVR ISP or your terminal program.
A severely limited oscilloscope (SLO-scope). You can use this to measure voltages between 0 and ~5 V at either 10 kHz or 20 kHz. Here is a screenshot of the client for Windows:
Bonus Contest: Win one of these programmers by replying to this thread with the correct identification of what the signals are in the SLO-scope screenshot above!
The signals look like stereo audio waveforms of someone talking or singing a cappella (silence during the natural pauses so it probably isn’t music). It looks like the frequency varies between about 120 and 240 Hz, which sounds reasonable for a voice. Unfortunately I can’t read waveform.
I guess it’s been long enough that we can end the contest. The signal is from the two phases of a stepper motor I was manually turning back and forth (one side of each coil was connected to around 2.5V so since the SLO-scope only has a range of 0-5V). Some characteristics that give it away are that the two signals are 90 degrees out of phase and that the amplitude is proportional to frequency. In the close-up, the phase difference changes from blue leading to blue lagging because the motor changed directions in the middle.
