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Have you ever wondered exactly what is going on in the 2.4GHz WiFi and ISM band around your house. What channel is it best to set your wireless router to? Why are you getting such poor performance across your WiFi network? Is your neighbour on the same frequency? Just what is out there? This neat little gadget will sniff the airwaves and give you a graph of the signal strength vs frequency across the entire band. It connects to your computer by USB 2.0 and with the companion Windows software you can display the spectrum or save the raw data to an Excel compatible file for some more number crunching. It uses just two significant components, a radio module from Cypress Semiconductor and a PIC microcontroller from Microchip. Total cost to build it should be less than US$30. The 2.4GHz Band The 2.4GHz ISM (Industrial Scientific Medical) band is often called the WiFi band because it is used for WiFi networking (ie, 802.11 b/g/n). This band is unlicensed, meaning that you and anyone can tran...

This simple circuit lets you scan a 220V live wire. The clock input of the IC is connected to a wire, which acts as the sensor. Here, we have used 10cm length of 22SWG wire as the sensor. When you hold the sensor (metallic conductor or copper wire) close to the live wire, electric field from mains activates the circuit. As the input impedance of the CMOS IC is high, the electric field induced in the sensor is sufficient to clock it. The output obtained at pin 11 of CD4017 drives the LED. Flashing of the LED (LED2) indicates the presence of mains, while LED1 indicates that the scanner is active. 220V Live Wire Scanner Circuit Diagram The circuit can be used to find stray leakage from electrical appliances like fans, mixers, refrigerators, etc. It can be easily assembled on any general-purpose board or the discrete components can be directly soldered on the IC. A 9V PP3 battery powers the circuit. If you use a mains adaptor, make sure that it is well regulated and isolated; otherwise, ev...