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LiFePo is likely more suited, 3.6v peak with 3.2v nominal as opposed to 4.2v peak 3.7 nominal.

Considering that NiMH is a consistent 1.2v/cell 2.4v should function for typical two cell setups. Which means that a single LiFePo cell with a low dropout linear regulator would work a treat. Something like a LT1763-2.5 should do the trick fairly efficiently.

Combined with a low voltage cutoff for protecting the battery and that could be nice. A quick scan of amazon shows that they already make AA size lifepo batteries that fit, a single cell in one side and the regulator and the other and you're set.

Someone somewhere must already be selling this, but I've yet to stumble across it after a quick google.

it's not about the CPUs it's about the conversion back to analog:
http://www.analog.com/en/products/digital-to-analog-converters.html
as an example. The higher precision you go (from 8 bit up to 32 bit) the higher the cost.
-nb

Gotcha. Regulatory issues aside, there are chips that do I/Q upconverting. I've always wanted to get one and play with it. They're actually becoming commodity hardware, potentially illegal as they may be.

FWIW, most of the electronic components IN a phone are also sold with a disclaimer like that. Typical example here:

http://www.analog.com/en/content/analog_devices_terms_and_conditions/fca.html

Use in Life Support and Other Critical Applications

Products sold by Analog Devices are not designed, intended or approved for use in life support, implantable medical devices, transportation, nuclear, safety or other equipment where malfunction of the Product can reasonably be expected to result in personal injury, death, severe property damage or severe environmental harm. Buyer uses or sells Products for use in such critical applications at Buyer's own risk and agrees to defend, indemnify and hold harmless Analog Devices from any and all damages, claims, suits or expenses resulting from such use.

I'm pretty sure that any smartphone app-based system isn't exactly going to be a critical care/life support type of device, though.

That's not how it works in practice. The TV doesn't have a specific chip for decoding HDCP.

This $8 chip disagrees with you.
Load it up with some keys and you get the unencrypted audio/video stream on the output pins.

Take a normal 1080p supporting HDTV. Spend some time reverse engineering it, and connect every pixel on the screen to some AD converters. Technically, if you somehow manage to mux them properly, you'd only need about 2-3 of these to read out all pixels at a 60hz rate.

So.. 1080p, 60hz, 3 colors, 12 bit per color..

1920 * 1080 * (60 hz) * 3 * (12 bits) = 533.935547 MBps (Love Google's builtin calc).

Uncompressed, a 533MB/s data stream. USB 3 have a maximum transmission speed of up to 5 Gbit/s (640 MB/s). You wouldn't even need a video capture card. Then do some logic in the cpu, and save a compressed stream to disk (First step would probably be badly compressed, would just to be able to handle saving the stream to disk. Next step would probably be a 2-pass mp4 encoding). Then burn to DVD / bluray and sell to customers (which then copy/rip it and upload to pirate bay).

I would say that chinese copiers/knockoff producers would be perfectly capable of such a feat. And if the TV's key somehow gets blacklisted, you grab a new one and spend a week's time getting that up and running.

And that is if they somehow managed to protect the signal all the way until it's time to light up the actual pixels. I'm sure that in most cases they could connect to the stream at an earlier point, and get the raw digital data out.

A good digital scope costs hundreds if not thousands of dollars

Sometimes you can get lucky and grab one for free or nearly free. I got a Tektronix 2440 this way. It wasn't completely working, mind you, but it's something one can fix... if not then probably you don't need the scope anyway :-) There is a lot of old, well used and maybe a bit broken equipment around that nobody in a business wants. You just need to make contacts, look around, visit your neighborhood Weird Stuff - and dive into a dumpster sometimes.

But there is something else you can do. Build your own high speed oscilloscope. Today it's not that difficult. Take AD9601, for example - it's a 300 MSPS A/D with dual (interleaved) parallel bus. You need also an FPGA to capture the data - some Spartan probably will do. Then you need a simple USB MCU to fetch the data from the FPGA and slowly ship it into the PC. Total three ICs, not counting the analog front end which is not a rocket science anymore. You can generate the sample clock with a DCM in the FPGA. Build such a thing and it will be a great exercise. Such a scope will be not a toy, it will be a very useful, small device. Logic Shrimp is a logic analyzer, but this is a real scope - in all its 10-bit glory. You actually can measure analog signals with it. You can use even a lower resolution A/D, like AD9484. (Bits are necessary when you are doing DSP, not when you are just looking at things.)

Yep no way you could use http://www.analog.com/en/mems/imu/adis16354/products/product.html for this application. That price tag of $250 each (quantity 100) would be an unbearable cost.

The Analog Designs ADE7763 is a pretty awesome chip for doing this sort of stuff. Here's the appnote in a pdf, and here's the chip itself. It's quite easily interfaced to an Arduino using SPI. I just laid out a board interfacing this to an ATMEGA1284 for doing power quality monitoring and logging, but it's for an internal project so I can't just hand out the code or layout, but it was a dead simple chip to work with: one crystal and two caps were all it required for support, and if it were interfaced to an Arduino, that could handle all the I/O to a computer or write to an SD card.

The Analog Designs ADE7763 is a pretty awesome chip for doing this sort of stuff. Here's the appnote in a pdf, and here's the chip itself. It's quite easily interfaced to an Arduino using SPI. I just laid out a board interfacing this to an ATMEGA1284 for doing power quality monitoring and logging, but it's for an internal project so I can't just hand out the code or layout, but it was a dead simple chip to work with: one crystal and two caps were all it required for support, and if it were interfaced to an Arduino, that could handle all the I/O to a computer or write to an SD card.

I imagine they are more likely to switch to a chip with rotation sensors in it (rather than adding a second chip):

http://www.analog.com/en/mems/imu/adis16362/products/product.html

The integration and manufacturer costs should be lower, offsetting any extra expense for the chip (which probably doesn't need to be much more expensive, if you can put 3 MEMs devices on a chip, you can do 6).

I messed with this stuff some for school (almost ten years ago) and 2-axis chips were just coming to market, so things are moving right along.

A thousand bucks is a lot, though. And for five hundred, I want more than some accelerometers. I want the position of every joint in the hand! I'm serious when I say that a five-sensor project like what they're selling here is within the reach of the experimenter. You will need some cheap little accelerometers (like these?) and a microcontroller with some high-res counters, probably one per axis.

On paper, sure. In practice, no. The wiimote is +/- 3g with 10% sensitivity. If you start doing those kind of precise calculations starting with data that is somewhat inaccurate then you are going to end up with data that is nearly meaningless. It wasn't designed to be that accurate. If you buy an expensive accelerometer then maybe, but the wiimote uses a ADXL330 chip.

You do not remember correctly. Saying "Germanium voltage is 0.3" is like saying "Ford cars are red." Note that regular silicon devices can operate as low as 0.3V up to 40V and beyond. The material used does not dictate the voltage; the process and structure design do. I.e. Here's an SiGe chip that uses 5V power.

I guess you haven't seen the stuff done by Jason Lee ... the accelerometers do not have anything to do with where your cursor is on the screen, it is all the IR.

This is why he has a Wii remote held stationary, with infrared emitters being used in place of the sensor bar to get various neat user interfaces to work.

Accelerometers are susceptible to cumulative errors that would make them useless for an accurate pointing device. The accelerometers in the Wii remote help it detect the angle its at (wii sports uses for swinging the club/racket/bat/bowling throws), and vibration/shock (when you wiggle it in Zelda or Mario Galaxy). Combining angle and acceleration data (by working out what the acceleration is after gravity has been removed from the sum). Unless you can sample at an infinite rate, with infinite precision, you can't avoid the errors. And frankly, why bother, the IR sensor requires less processing power and is more accurate since its position (in theory) in a way that aligns it with the device you're supposed to be pointing at in the first place.

The accelerometers can be calibrated without any reference to the sensor bar by simply holding the Wii remote still. You can assume the Wii remote is only limited in the distance it will move in any given period of time since in the context of the system, its only going to be able move a few feet, the range of your arm swing. So, given that they know its never going to be in constant motion, and at some point it has to stop, or its moving in a circle, you can, once you have a reading across all the accelerometers that measures close to the force of gravity and no more or less, if that continues for more than a few seconds, its likely the device isn't moving and calibration can occur. It really only needs to calibrate with the sensor bar once to get a baseline for how much the accelerometers are off. Since the accelerometers aren't going to be changing temperature drastically even in some players sweaty hands, you hardly have to even consider adjusting for tempature drift after the first calibration. They probably do just because its likely the accelorometers used already have temperature sensors on them for just that purpose anyway. So ... finding 'down' at any given point in time is relatively easy, using that you know the angle of the Wii remote at any given point in time. It doesn't help you at all as far as which direction the remote is pointing (north/east/west/south) but its perfect for that golf swing or driving game where you tilt it for steering.

As a pointing device, the Wii remote IS useless every time it loses site of the sensor bar. As anyone who owns a Wii can confirm, its a rather annoying fact of using the Wii remote.

'Gyros' no longer require moving parts. Technically, REAL gyros do, but no one uses them anymore if they can avoid it due to power consumption and reliability due to moving parts and wear. Now 'gyros' for sensing rotation around an axis use piezo films which detect based on how the film bends like modern accelerometers (and as such are skewed by gravity) or MEMS technology which detect by shooting a laser into two strands of fiber optic material around a circular path and measure the time difference between when the beam arrives back through each path to detect rotation without being skewed by other accelerations/gravity. They are used in many guidance systems to supplement GPS data for more accuracy by helping to correct GPS measurements between GPS updates. Or, in purely inertial guidance systems. Of course, just like accelerometers, they are susceptible to cumulative errors as time goes on. With a combination of Gyros and accelerometers and our good friend gravity, a large amount of the errors can be corrected for, but not completely.

Here are some examples of MEMS gyros from Analog Devices: http://www.analog.com/en/subCat/0,2879,764%255F801%255F0%255F%255F0%255F,00.html

Cold-point compensation does not mean it actively heats or cools anything on the chip.
Check the data sheet.
http://www.analog.com/UploadedFiles/Data_Sheets/AD594_595.pdf

Peltier devices on-chip have been used for a while, whenever temperature variations are intolerable. Some examples: Analog Devices AD595 thermocouple amp, which uses in-chip thermal calibration to ensure a cold junction of known temperature, and many voltage regulators and switching supply controllers that use temperature-controlled bandgaps as their voltage reference.

Any person who is not tone deaf can tell the difference between solid state distortion and tube distortion. Please don't compare the basic principles of rock guitar with overpriced audiophile folly.

Much of the overpriced is going away along with tube microphonics, gassy tubes, high voltage resistors, capacitors and high power consumption. With Digital Signal Processing DSP is rapidly providing 24 bit 40KHZ or higher modeling of the classic sounds without the problems and high cost. The overdrive curve of tubes can easly be modeled in a DSP.

http://emusician.com/dsp/studio_devil_virtual_guitar_amp/
http://www.analog.com/processors/tigersharc/overview/customerstories/fractalAudio/fractalAudioIndex.html
http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/FM15DSP/

CDDAs have a form of copy protection almost identical to that described in the wikipedia article you link to, so I don't think you argument entirely makes sense.

The protection you refer to is in the formatting, not the data. If you simply do a Digital Audio extraction, then the formatting is removed. This leaves you with a 16 bit 44.1Khz PCM audio data file. This can be captured in several ways in the ripping process. DAO is one. SPDIF output is another. Tying directly to the D/A converter and logging the writes with a bitgrabber is another. At the D/A converter it is serial 16Bit data with a serial clock pin and right/left pin. It isn't hard.

Here is a typical 18 bit dual channel A/D converter. All you need to capture is the clock, serial data and latch for both channels. At this component you have audio data, not formatting, subcodes, toc and other non audio data.
http://www.analog.com/UploadedFiles/Data_Sheets/AD1865.pdf PDF alert.

The fairly recent appearance of motion sensors in everything from mobile phones to games consoles is due to MEMS technology. If you're a geek, it's quite likely you've got a MEMS device already and it's likely made by Analog Devices.

Actually, Analog Devices probably has a larger MEMS rollout and probably for a longer time. MEMS is incorporated into airbag systems (about 200 million units and the largest market share at around 60%), IBM's Active Protection System for Thinkpads and of course Nintendo's Wii controller. I would assume that this fatigue would be something worthy of further examination. Disclaimer: I work for Analog Devices, but not as a product designer.

Actually, Analog Devices probably has a larger MEMS rollout and probably for a longer time. MEMS is incorporated into airbag systems (about 200 million units and the largest market share at around 60%), IBM's Active Protection System for Thinkpads and of course Nintendo's Wii controller. I would assume that this fatigue would be something worthy of further examination. Disclaimer: I work for Analog Devices, but not as a product designer.

We want to do this in less than a 30-millimeter [on a side] cube, to serve as an image stabilizer in cameras and to track a person's position in the intervals when he can't get a GPS signal.

TFA: ...Today, such products are quite big, a cube 10 centimeters on a side. We want to do this in less than a 30-millimeter cube...

Not sure island they have been living on, but this was actually available in the end of the previous century.

Analog Devices and others have been selling the ADXRS150 http://www.analog.com/en/prod/0%2C2877%2CADXRS150% 2C00.html and many others for years.

Links to the Analog Devices pages:

Accelerometers:
http://www.analog.com/en/subCat/0,2879,764%255F800 %255F0%255F%255F0%255F,00.html
(Mostly 1 or 2 axis; the only 3-axis one is the one used in the Wii. It costs $5.45.)

Gyroscopes:
http://www.analog.com/en/subCat/0,2879,764%255F801 %255F0%255F%255F0%255F,00.html
(All available parts are 1 axis. Costs from $30.)

Here's the fun stuff. This not-yet-available part:
http://www.analog.com/en/prod/0%2C2877%2CADIS16350 %2C00.html
combines a 3-axis gyro with a 3-axis accelerometer, and is close to what the author is referring to; it's a cube about 23mm on each side. It looks like a great product, if the price is right.

Links to the Analog Devices pages:

Accelerometers:
http://www.analog.com/en/subCat/0,2879,764%255F800 %255F0%255F%255F0%255F,00.html
(Mostly 1 or 2 axis; the only 3-axis one is the one used in the Wii. It costs $5.45.)

Gyroscopes:
http://www.analog.com/en/subCat/0,2879,764%255F801 %255F0%255F%255F0%255F,00.html
(All available parts are 1 axis. Costs from $30.)

Here's the fun stuff. This not-yet-available part:
http://www.analog.com/en/prod/0%2C2877%2CADIS16350 %2C00.html
combines a 3-axis gyro with a 3-axis accelerometer, and is close to what the author is referring to; it's a cube about 23mm on each side. It looks like a great product, if the price is right.

Links to the Analog Devices pages:

Accelerometers:
http://www.analog.com/en/subCat/0,2879,764%255F800 %255F0%255F%255F0%255F,00.html
(Mostly 1 or 2 axis; the only 3-axis one is the one used in the Wii. It costs $5.45.)

Gyroscopes:
http://www.analog.com/en/subCat/0,2879,764%255F801 %255F0%255F%255F0%255F,00.html
(All available parts are 1 axis. Costs from $30.)

Here's the fun stuff. This not-yet-available part:
http://www.analog.com/en/prod/0%2C2877%2CADIS16350 %2C00.html
combines a 3-axis gyro with a 3-axis accelerometer, and is close to what the author is referring to; it's a cube about 23mm on each side. It looks like a great product, if the price is right.

Don't forget that you need at least a 60MHz (yes, sixty megahertz) ADC and DSP pair to do what was suggested. The cost of building useful supporting electronics around a DSP capable of implementing a direct sampling receiver at 60MHz would be prohibitive in the range $ridiculous-$ludicrous.

Maybe there aren't any DSP available and low cost, if you aren't a hardware designer:

400 MHz DSP $10.00 http://www.analog.com/en/epProd/0,,ADSP-BF532,00.h tml
14-bit, 65 MSPS ADC $30.00 http://www.analog.com/en/prod/0,,AD6644,00.html
Catching non-designers talking smack ...priceless

Don't forget that you need at least a 60MHz (yes, sixty megahertz) ADC and DSP pair to do what was suggested. The cost of building useful supporting electronics around a DSP capable of implementing a direct sampling receiver at 60MHz would be prohibitive in the range $ridiculous-$ludicrous.

Maybe there aren't any DSP available and low cost, if you aren't a hardware designer:

400 MHz DSP $10.00 http://www.analog.com/en/epProd/0,,ADSP-BF532,00.h tml
14-bit, 65 MSPS ADC $30.00 http://www.analog.com/en/prod/0,,AD6644,00.html
Catching non-designers talking smack ...priceless

If you can't find it in a DIL (or DIP) then digkeyhttp://www.digikey.com/scripts/DkSearch/dksu s.dll?Criteria?Ref=33490&Site=US&Cat=34079261 sells adapters. Many manufactures will also send you a few samples of chips for development work, they generally send you ~5 of any sub $15 chip for free (including shipping). Maximhttp://www.maxim-ic.com/ is one of the best for sending out free samples quickly, but analog deviceshttp://www.analog.com/, and just about any of the others send out freebees as well.

I thought nintendo was supposed to be using the Gyration miniature gyroscopes.

Analog devices make MEMS gyroscopes too. Nintendo could have gone to any vendor, of course.

There's not as much market for gyroscopes as for accelerometers, hence they're more expensive. Sometimes they can be found in car satellite navigation systems as a way of increasing resolution above what GPS can offer - ever heard of a roundabout? They're useful there - and there are other applications as well. Games consoles, for instance!

If you read the article, it says:

Analog Devices Inc. of Norwood, Massachusetts makes a similar chip, which goes into the main Wii controller, the stick-like Wii Remote. According to Analog Devices, ST's chip is used in the auxiliary Freestyle controller (popularly known as the "Nunchuck") that connects to the larger controller for some games. ST said it was not allowed to say where exactly its chip is used.

Sony Corp.'s "Sixaxis" controller for the PS3 also has an accelerometer. The six axises the name refers to are the three dimensions of space, plus three axises of spin. The company hasn't revealed who makes the chip.

A good picture of a two-axis accelerometer can be seen here: http://users.wpi.edu/~cfurlong/me-593Mech.html (second picture down). Sensing is usually performed by capacitive combs, structures which act as capacitors, with their capacitance varying with displacement.

MEMS accelerometers have dropped in price in recent years because there's a big market: the automotive sector. A typical new car needs two accelerometers, one for the traction control system measuring roughly plus-or-minus 2 to 4g, and one for airbag deployment measuring more like 50g.

Two big manufacturers are Analog Devices and ST Microelectronics, though others exist.

The high demand of the automotive sector has driven prices right down; sensors which would have cost hundreds of dollars in the past can now be purchased in bulk for less than $4. In fact, you could order one right now; component retailers will sell you one for less than $15.

Instrumentation amplifiers. They're cheap and astounding. CMRR's of 80 or 100. Take a look at the Analog Designs AD620, for instance. It's superb (even if they are our competitors.) I've used it for making an EKG based on an old Scientific American Amateur Scientist article, and here's a slashdot thread about another AD620-based EKG.

I think the sensor bar is just for pointing at the screen with the infra-red thing on the front.

http://www.analog.com/en/prod/0,2877,ADXL202,00.ht ml

They probably use something like that in the controller, combined with bluetooth to the console. $8.50 each ain't cheap, but I'm sure with volume in the millions like Nintendo has that cost goes way down.

It would be a horrible horrible let down if "motion sensing" means something other than accelerometers in the controller.

The assembly is about typical for a Kyosho product. Try building one of their better 4WD R/C cars, with a working suspension, transmission and differentials to assemble. Very similar experience.

The actuators for this robot are apparently still output-only R/C PWM-type servos. The competitive product Robonova, though, has position and current feedback from the servos to the control computer, which moves it out of the dumb preprogrammed category into something that has potential for real autonomy.

The sensor suite on these things is still below par. These things really need a 6DOF inertial navigation system for balance, which means three rate gyros (about $22 each) and three accelerometers (about $6 total). They need force sensing in the feet and hands. With that, a camera, and a WiFi link to an external computer, you have almost ASIMO-level hardware functionality. I'll bet we see all that in a year. It's the obvious next step.

Then the problem is to develop software for robust legged locomotion. There's been work on that, but most of it is with expensive one-off machines. Once that moves to commercial robot hardware in the $1K range, progress will be rapid.

The assembly is about typical for a Kyosho product. Try building one of their better 4WD R/C cars, with a working suspension, transmission and differentials to assemble. Very similar experience.

The actuators for this robot are apparently still output-only R/C PWM-type servos. The competitive product Robonova, though, has position and current feedback from the servos to the control computer, which moves it out of the dumb preprogrammed category into something that has potential for real autonomy.

The sensor suite on these things is still below par. These things really need a 6DOF inertial navigation system for balance, which means three rate gyros (about $22 each) and three accelerometers (about $6 total). They need force sensing in the feet and hands. With that, a camera, and a WiFi link to an external computer, you have almost ASIMO-level hardware functionality. I'll bet we see all that in a year. It's the obvious next step.

Then the problem is to develop software for robust legged locomotion. There's been work on that, but most of it is with expensive one-off machines. Once that moves to commercial robot hardware in the $1K range, progress will be rapid.

11 GHz chip != 11 GHz processor. They're mainly talking about analog chips - i.e. op-amps, oscillators, high speed muxes, etc. Chips like these: http://www.maxim-ic.com/solutions/cellular_handset s/index.mvp?pl_pk=14 http://www.analog.com/en/subCat/0,2879,770%255F851 %255F0%255F%255F0%255F,00.html

I do not really think that the controller is that expensive. According to trade magasines one of the gyro chips used is the ADXL330 by analog devices and that just costs 5 USD at 1000 units. Buy 15 millions and i guess the price could be a third of that.

geek out and read the data sheet! I know that I have.
http://www.analog.com/en/prod/0,2877,ADXL330,00.ht ml

Analog Devices makes a family of DSP called the Blackfin that runs uClinux. We've been using a development board for well over a year. If this is TI's first linux offering, I'd say they're late to the party. Maybe it was hard to port Linux because sizeof(char) was 2. (If you've ever used a 16-bit TI DSP... :)

1UP.com referred to it as a "chip", but I can't imagine what it could be other than an gyroscope.

The ADXRS150 is a 150 deg./sec. angular rate sensor (gyroscope) on a single chip, complete with all of the required electronics.

Well, for highly specialised tasks, take a look at Analog Devices http://www.analog.com/ or Texas Instruments http://www.ti.com/.

They have been producing highly sophisticated cores that left a P4 bite the dust in a lot of cases.

I have worked on test-bed equipment that used a DSP PCI card that produced more test-data than a dual Xeon system could handle. JFYI.

GPUs like those from nVidia or ATI are still a lot less sophisticated than those DSPs, or hybrid DSP/uCs.

Still, in a few years FPGAs or CPLDs will surely be a so called "bigger threat" to (your favorite CPU company's) domination.... ;)

There are several inexpensive (under $200) data loggers available. For example, the HOBO, or something from the Datalogger Store. Dataq also sells inexpensive A/D converters, but you would have to take a laptop along on the rowing shell to record the data, Their stand-alone data loggers are a bit more pricey ~$400), but use SD memory and have high resolution and high storage capacity. You can get free samples of accellerometers from Analog Devices .

And I'm also certian that the US didn't just complete the first non-government manned space flight and doesn't have billions of dollars going to develop private space flight.

Give me a break.

China is emerging as an ecenomic powerhouse, and it looks like it will continue down that path, provided their government doesn't screw up. However please don't pretend like all good things come from China. I gave just a small list of the US companies that produce advanced hardware, including what drives almost all the devices you listed. Your MP3 player may be built in China but it's usually using TI DSPs and AD opamps.

You know it's perfectly possible for China AND the US to be economic powers, and for both to benefit from trade with each other.

Yes, it would take some time. Yes, it would be a challenge. But it's a long way from impossible, and all it takes is a handfull of off the shelf parts - AD even has application notes. Combine one of their evalkits with the specs for, say, an IBM TFT display (13.3" 1024x768 units are like 80 bucks on ebay and 14" 1280x1024 units are only slightly more) and I''ll wager you could not only make your own display circuit, you could probably offer the pcboards after you design it and make enough money to buy a proper projection hdtv.

Let us know when you have the circuit - I want about four of'em.

"Adaptively Cancelling Server Fan Noise" can be found here. They were able to lower the whine by 30dB and the broadband noise by 20dB.

"Adaptively Cancelling Server Fan Noise" can be found here. They were able to lower the whine by 30dB and the broadband noise by 20dB.

So modulate in hardware and demod to baseband in software.

With a simple analog multipler (for example, the Analog Devices AD834) and e.g. a 5 KHz oscillator, you can AM a band-limited (say, DC-500 Hz) signal, put it in your sound card, then do the demod in software (another multiplication will work).

This will cost you, in total, about $5 (you can get free samples of the AD834 and you'll need some resistors, some caps, a couple op-amps, and some wire) and will give you DC-500Hz through your modulator or 20Hz-24KHz without it. Not too shabby, especially compared with $500.

By the way, if you're going to spend $500ish anyway, why not pick up a Tektronix 2445 or 2465 on EBay? The 2465 has 350MHz bandwidth and is, IMHO, one of the nicest all-around scopes out there.

http://www.analog.com/processors/processors/sharc/ index.html

There is a whole family of DSP chips from analog devices with that name(Super Harvard ARChitecture, more info about what that means . SHARC's get used in lots of things, particularly audio equipment like creamware's dsp cards, behringer's digital mixers, etc along with many other uses. For some additional info about DSP's you can read this intro