The Weak Signal Challenge - Decode and Win $100

Posted by michael on Saturday September 27, 2003 @09:56AM from the behold-the-power-of-matlab dept.

superid writes "Several years ago while reading comp.dsp I found a link to The Weak Signal Challenge. On that page is a .wav file of a morse code signal bounced off the moon. The page author Mike Cook is offering $100 to the next person to successfully decode the morse code. Since I was the one who originally solved this, I promised Mike that I wouldn't divulge the answer or provide any clues. I can say thought that I didn't use anything special other than traditional signal processing techniques, octave, matlab, and patience. I think that overall I spent about 24 hours total sitting at my '486. I think it would be great to generate some interest in this. Maybe someone could come up with a novel solution and win $100!"

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What I would do. by geekee · 2003-09-27 10:40 · Score: 2, Insightful

I'd assume the beeps are a single tone. Run a fourier xform on the signal and look for any dominant tones (peaks) in the spectrum. Once the frequency is known, run the signal through a narrow band filter at that frequency to eliminate the noise. After that the tones should be recognizable enough to decode by ear.

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Re:Time Worth... by ryanw · 2003-09-27 11:24 · Score: 3, Insightful

Damn though, somehow I think if I end up doing this my time will come out being worth about $0.05 an hour... all for the fun of it ;-)
Well, thats still more then something like counterstrike or equiv can offer. Pay $40 for the game, play for hundreds of hours, and get nothing back in return except for a few broken mice, carpal tunnel, blood shot eyes, etc.