alt Hacker NewsThe coolest thing I ever did with that was finding wires in a friends wall - we needed to drill a hole and it was unclear whether the wires went up (problem) or right from the outlet. I didn't have a cable finder on hand but did have the epiphany to put a large load on the outlet (we used a kettle, a hairdryer would also work, just needs a lot of watts) and use the Fourier transform magnet spectrum to find the 50 Hz grid frequency in the wall. Worked beautifully.
Sadly, since most smartphone magnetometers seem to have a sample rate of 100/s, this will not be applicable to Americans and everyone else with a 60 Hz grid frequency, the 50 Hz were already at the Nyquist–Shannon limit.
> this will not be applicable to Americans and everyone else with a 60 Hz grid frequency, the 50 Hz were already at the Nyquist–Shannon limit.
The trick should work fine, but you may confuse the 60Hz signal with a 40Hz signal [1] [2].
This should work for higher frequencies too, but if the frequency is toooo high the problem is that the magnetometers averages a short period of time (or use a window) instead of being an actual an instant measurement.
[1] Calculated using my fingers moving in the air. 60=50+10 -> 50-10=40. I think it's 40Hz, but I would need a pencil and paper to be sure.
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aliasing