Tag: Oscilloscope

Oscilloclock shop owner Aaron’s latest offering is based on a vectorscope, a special kind of oscilloscope used to analyze the quality of television or video signals. Like its brethren, the digital age has reduced the need for vectorscopes, but Aaron can make them useful again as clocks.

If you have to ask what an oscilloscope is, Gabriel Anzziani’s invention isn’t for you. The founder of Gabotronics made waves when he created the amazingly tiny Xprotolab oscilloscope. Now he’s working on the Oscilloscope Watch, a more portable and versatile version of the Xprotolab.

Vintage oscilloscopes are amazing devices. It turns out that they make great clocks too. It was around 1960, when Aaron’s grandfather purchased an Heathkit OR-1 oscilloscope, which he passed down in his family in excellent condition.

Back when I was in college I used to walk by one of the engineering labs all the time on my way to class and see the geeks in there working with oscilloscopes. I always wondered what exactly they were for.

Even though it was obviously not it’s primary function, the oscilloscope is considered to be one of the first video game systems. Flashing LEDs pays tribute to that appropriately geeky root of gaming with this clever hack.

Boy, I can remember when an oscilloscope was an unwieldy box with a vector screen, which required significant desktop space  – and cost at least a few hundred bucks. Now, thanks to modern technology, you can get an oscilloscope that’s so compact, you can throw it in your pocket or backpack.

A simple little game featuring a bouncing green ball on a laboratory oscilloscope is commonly thought of as one of the first ever video games, if not the first. Brookhaven Lab engineer Willy Higinbotham’s Tennis for Two was less a game and more a demo of manipulating a bouncing ball on a scope, but it is seen as the forefather of all modern games which started with PONG and Space War.

Looking for a cool way to keep your coats up off the floor? Then look no further than the Beat coat rack by designer Colin O’Dowd. Whether you think of it as the pulse of a beating heart, the waveform of your favorite tune, or the trend line for your stock portfolio, it’s definitely a conversation piece on any wall.

Here’s a cool hack which uses an old oscilloscope to play an accurate game of the arcade classic, Tetris. Engineer Lars Pontoppidan created Scopetris using an AtMega32 micro-controller to drive the beam of an oscilloscope to mimic the game play of the classic Soviet puzzle game.