Spectrum Analyzer V2.5

This was by far my most complex project, spending about one year prototyping, building and improving it.

It started when I found a nice vacuum fluorescent display and I decided to make my own Spectrum Analyzer.

Unlike most of my other projects, most of the schematic, PCB and code was designed by me. Because of this I learned much more about electronics and microcontrollers.

Details and features:

  • Sampling rate of 48kHz.
  • FFT size: 2048 samples.
  • FFT is calculated in real-time using an efficient Radix4 algorithm running on an Arduino Due 84MHz ARM CPU.
  • Beautiful oldschool VFD display.
  • ISO standard frequency bands.
  • Everything powered from a 5V USB port.
  • Configurable using a small remote control.
  • Automatic gain switching of the hardware ADC.
  • Per band individual gain control based on running average.
  • Command line interface for debugging.
  • All configurations saved to non-volatile memory on restart.
  • Automatic power of when no audio is detected.
  • Everything in a small 10.2cm x 5.5cm x 3.3 cm package.

To see it in action, watch the video.

Date Started
September, 2014
Date Finished
October, 2015