[Elecraft] (no subject)

[Phil Hystad]

Another (possibly cheaper) mathematical computation system for doing signal processing is Mathematica by Wolfram.  Mathematica is used quite a bit in the academic world for a very wide variety of computational problems.  With regarding to signal processing there is support for various types of DSP implementations supporting image processing, sound processing, and RF signal processing.

But, a professional version of Mathematica is about $2500 these days.  At least, that is what we pay for it at work.  I do have my own copy at home, actually two copies, for the At Home edition which costs only $295.  Everything I can do on the professional version at work I can do with the At Home edition.  There are only a few limitations of the Home Edition of Mathematica and so far I have not run into any of them.

The license limits you to one Home edition per computer so I have purchased one copy for my Apple Mac laptop and one copy for my desktop iMac-24.  Yes, I use both systems even to do Mathematica stuff.

By the way, I also have the professional (or, commercial) license to Matlab which I have used for some contract work a few years ago.  I still play around with it from time to time but my first love is Mathematica.  I have also played around with Mathcad which although is nice and has some cute features for documentation, it is not anywhere close to the capability of Mathematica. So, at $295, the Mathematica Home Edition is quite a good buy.

So, if you want to experiment with Mathematica you might consider the Wolfram Alpha web site at http://www.wolframalpha.com.  The command entry window on Alpha will accept most (if not all) Mathematica commands that you can type in.  For example, to integrate the six(x) function, just go to Wolfram Alpha and type in:  Integrate[Sin[x],x]

In the command above, capital letters are important and the use of square brackets [] is important.  If you want to play around with some of Wolfram Alpha features, start by typing in your name, just your first name like "Phil", "Roger", "Dick" or whatever.

73, phil, K7PEH


On Jun 6, 2011, at 3:36 PM, John Ragle wrote:

> For a while, I have been trying to add to my library a book on DSP that 
> was mid-way between cookbook and pure theory. Thinking someone else 
> might like to have the reference to a book that I recently found, I am 
> using Elecraft bandwidth to send it:
> 
> The Scientist and Engineer's Guide to Digital Signal Processing -- ISBN 
> 0-9660176-3-3 -- By Steven W. Smith, Ph.D.
> 
> The book is available free on the following web site:   
> http://www.dspguide.com/    If it interests you, you might want to look 
> at the Chapter headings contained there.
> 
> Many of the routines (e.g. convolution, sinc, windowed-sinc, 
> deconvolution, etc.) are described in a /pseudo/-BASIC language form, 
> but I have found that they can more easily be worked out in a language 
> like Mathcad, etc. (This observation is probably not worth much for 
> those who have spent big bucks for the signal processing add-ins for the 
> latter.)
> 
> John Ragle -- W1ZI
> 
> 
> 
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