How to recognize patter in an analog waveform?

Hi All

As the title of this thread suggest, I am looking for ways to recognize patterns in an analog waveform. Well the obvious answer to this question is use Artifical Neural Network (ANN) as ( from the text on google) its been used for pattern recognition and all sorts of stuff. Ive been trying to learn about these ANNs for the past week and trust me all the literature kind of put me off :-x

So, I need your expert advise on how I could possible recognize patterns in an analog waveform. At this point in my project Im not sure what exactly I would be serching for in the waveform but it would certainly be things like :
1) Delta Y ( to reach first maxima/minima in the waveform)
2) Slew rate to first maxima/minima
3) Maximum Delta Y
4) Delta X
5) Delta X to reach first maxima/minima
and so on..........

Any advise ( especially on anything other than ANN) would be greatly appreciated. :-D
Thanks ;-)

What about digitizing your analog signal? By doing so, it will be very easy to extract any kind of pattern.

JoannesPaulus said:

What about digitizing your analog signal? By doing so, it will be very easy to extract any kind of pattern.

Click to expand...

Well I would be using a PIC micro to get those analog values. The pic would then transfer the digitalized value to my PC.

If you have the digitized analog values on your PC, you can write your functions in a language of your choice, C, MatLab... I believe you do not know what you are looking for in your signal. Once you decide that, you can create any level of complexity to recognize patterns.