"Mechanical engineers are not good at circuits." Challenge accepted! As part of an electrical engineering class I took at Princeton, I was involved in a partner project to design and build an electrocardiogram circuit, with a creative visualization component.

The design featured instrumentation and variable gain amplifiers to augment the signal gathered from electrodes on the patient's skin. From there, the signal went through band-pass and notch filters to get rid of high frequency and 60 Hz "outlet" noise, culminating in either an oscilloscope display or our custom visualization circuit. Our circuit would rotate a motor and alternate LEDs in sync with the patient's heartbeat.

This was a great exercise in analog circuit design, LTSpice simulation, breadboarding, and the dos and don'ts of soldering.