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This week I almost finished my Signal Recorder and Data Analyser, I just need to put some finishing touches to it and test it with some real data. I put the program through some fairly extensive testing with sample data, and it seems to be running quite well. Calculating the fundamental frequency is usually off by about 4 hz at most, for example, an input sine wave of 160Hz may be reported to have a fundamental frequency of 164 Hz, but this is close enough.

I am also pleased that I got the spectrogram, or waterfall display, working. I didn’t know if I would be able to figure out how to create one of those, but it was actually easier than figuring out the rest of the Fast Fourier Transform code. It also looks very professional, and it should be interesting to see what patterns are produced when I pass some real signals through it.

I also began preliminary concept work on my next project, which is an idea I have had for a while. I am about to make another post about it specificially, but in brief, it is a study of emergent behaviour in computer systems. I was inspired by the famous “Game of Life” by John Conway, and, combined with my great interest in AI, I intend to create a kind of virtual civilisation, using a Genetic Algorithm of my own design to evolve the population over many generations. I should be able to specify goals and world conditions, and observe how the population responds. I am hopeful that I can create something that responds in a manner not too dissimilar to how a real population of simple creatures would respond.