Re: Equipment for Electronics Lab

Ecnerwal wrote:
In article <dadb5398-6838-4895-9cf6-970c7de09c79@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
sodaant@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

I'm setting up a hobbyist electronics lab. What kind of equipment
should I buy to equip this lab? My budget is $3000.

"What you need" depends a huge amount on what you plan to do. Radio, microprocessors, audio, ...

One approach is to buy stuff as your hobby project of the moment requires - that will tend to match up your equipment to what you are actually doing, or have done, rather than tying up bunches of money in things you never use for your particular projects. If you are somewhat vague about projects, start in with things you need - you can build power supplies, buy kits to build meters, etc.

Oscilloscope (but there's a huge range, depending on what you plan to do.) Big differences are Analog .vs. Digital, number of channels, and speed.

Function generator

Frequency counter (perhaps, depending...)

Spectrum analyzer (perhaps, depending, but even old ones will probably blow your budget, so perhaps not)

Soldering tools - a combined iron/hot air system is one approach.

Anti-static (not essential for some things, but cheap enough to just do right once - get a good rubber bench mat and wrist-band)

meter(s) - multimeter, perhaps more than one or some dedicated less capable meters (advantage being that you can look at two parameters at once if you have more than one meter). Simpler meters have the advantage of being dirt cheap. One that does L/C (inductance/capacitance) is invaluable, especially if getting used parts by scrapping old equipment, as the markings are often obscure - or if winding your own inductors.

Power supplies

Parts to play with - resistors, capacitors, transistors, diodes, op-amps, ...

cables, wires, breadboards etc.

I can't second this advise more. You need to buy what you're going to want, and beyond the very basics you can't know that until you've been doing it for a while. I suggest you start by spending $200 to $500 now, and stash the remainder under a cabinet or in a special bank account (at least in the US banks are quite happy to let you open a second account, which makes it easy to separate your money).

That much money will get you a ton of basic equipment, or about 1/20th of a top-of-the-line oscilloscope. So you _do_ want to figure out what you want to spend your money on before it's all gone.

I also suggest that before you buy anything beyond pliers, multimeter, wire cutters and soldering iron, that you sit down and answer the question "is there a way that I can do this job with the equipment that I have". There are many pieces of specialized equipment that will do a job fast, and are essential for a profitable business, that you can replace with basic equipment and time spent in careful work in a hobbyist shop.

--

Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
http://www.wescottdesign.com

Do you need to implement control loops in software?
"Applied Control Theory for Embedded Systems" gives you just what it says.
See details at http://www.wescottdesign.com/actfes/actfes.html
.

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