For years, the oscilloscope was my favorite gadget for being such a ubiquitous instrument in the basement laboratories of 50s B-Movie scientists. As a kid, I didn’t know what an oscilloscope did, but it was clearly important somehow in the business of creating atomic supermen, or taking over the world with giant octopodes, or operating a Billion Bubble Machine.
In all things, there must be an end to innocence, though, and eventually, I found out that an oscilloscope is just a pretty bog standard machine allowing you to measure oscillations in voltage or current, and has nothing to do with playing God or conquering this world of man. I abandoned it as a favorite gadget, and moved on to playing with my iPod.
The oscilloscope seems to have come looking for me. This is the Oscium iMSO-104 oscilloscope kit, a hardware kit that will turn your iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad into a mixed signal oscilloscope just by attaching it via the dock connector. There’s even an array of multitouch gestures at your disposal to change analog input level, zoom in on axes, move input readouts and so on.
Want your iPhone to look like a dusty, flickering prop from Bride of the Atom? There’s an app for that, and it’s free. The kit itself, though, will cost you $300.
[via Gadget Lab]
