I thought this contest was over last week, but it actually finished yesterday (Tue Aug 19). If I'd known that, maybe I would have gotten this function finshed in a last-minute effort, but as it was, I took my time and made a nice set of improvements to the microphone/FPGA ADC path.

I always thought putting in an analog circuit like an ADC into an FPGA was a pretty questionable circuit design idea, so I was really pleased to see that the Altera MAX10 actually delivers some pretty nice results. At first I did not hold out much promise for it with really dirty waves. However, as you can see in the gallery images, after I did some managing of the opamp gain and working with grounding and isolating the signal path, I ended up with some very workable signals recorded by the FPGA and sent out the diagnostic UART. I'm impressed that an FPGA can do this well!

Best wishes for the contest participants!

My "most Gnarly thing to waste a significant portion of your life on" prize is a tie between the "Most complex blinking light in the world" and the "no-Silicon digital clock". 

My "you are nuts" prize goes to the Deriving 1 Hz from Candle Flame Oscillations. I want the math for *why* we get 10Hz...

My "Now that is novel" prize (and the one I hope wins) is the "Hopefully Hertz" project. Very interesting, I envision an experimental physicist...

And finally my "I really hope you lose" prize (just kidding) goes to the Metronalmost project. As a trained piano player, I hate you! But then again, I'm not really good friends with one that *does* keep good time, they can be pretty aggravating for ensuring good rhythm...