Lucky birthday boy

[PerranOak]

The boss has said that I can choose my pressie for my upcoming birthday; I reckon £200, tops. This amount is a one-off for this year (she got a bonus!): I am a lucky boy!

I already have: scope, bench PSU, sig gen, lots of books, all the basic stuff. I’m into microcontrollers (PIC) and sensing.

My question is: what should I ask for?

If I don’t come up with something, I’ll end up with some expensive item of clothing no doubt! 

[RoGeorge]

- nanoVNA and some RF cables/connectors, or
- Raspberry Pi kit with display and camera, or
- LiDAR mapping sensor, or
- 3D printer kit, or
- optical stereo inspection microscope, or
- ...

What would you want?

[Mr. Scram]

The boss has said that I can choose my pressie for my upcoming birthday; I reckon £200, tops. This amount is a one-off for this year (she got a bonus!): I am a lucky boy!

I already have: scope, bench PSU, sig gen, lots of books, all the basic stuff. I’m into microcontrollers (PIC) and sensing.

My question is: what should I ask for?

If I don’t come up with something, I’ll end up with some expensive item of clothing no doubt! 

I'm not seeing a DMM in that list. If already present, you need at least one more.

[PerranOak]

Great ideas RoGeorge though I don't now what a nanoVNA is really. Can you get a good 3D printer for £200?

Sorry both forgot to say I also have RPi stuff and a Fluke 87V. Also, Hakko FX-888D and PICkit3.

What about an EEPROM programmer? Are they, pretty much, all able to programme all, pretty much, chips?

[Mr. Scram]

Great ideas RoGeorge though I don't now what a nanoVNA is really. Can you get a good 3D printer for £200?

Sorry both forgot to say I also have RPi stuff and a Fluke 87V. Also, Hakko FX-888D and PICkit3.

What about an EEPROM programmer? Are they, pretty much, all able to programme all, pretty much, chips?

You need another DMM. 

[NiHaoMike]

How about a FPGA board? I'm not sure which one to suggest on that budget nowadays but definitely make sure it's supported by free tools. Beware that FPGA programming is so complex that it can be a career in itself.

I was going to suggest a logic analyzer but a cheap Beaglebone will handle most microcontroller I/Os easily. Just needs a level shifter to work on logic levels other than 3.3V.

A thermal camera also would be good if you don't already have one.

Great ideas RoGeorge though I don't now what a nanoVNA is really. Can you get a good 3D printer for £200?

Sorry both forgot to say I also have RPi stuff and a Fluke 87V. Also, Hakko FX-888D and PICkit3.

What about an EEPROM programmer? Are they, pretty much, all able to programme all, pretty much, chips?

NanoVNA is a budget vector network analyzer, mostly interesting for RF work.

You can take a look at the Ender 3, the first super cheap 3D printer with decent quality.

SPI and I2C EEPROMs are trivial to program using a microcontroller. Indeed, it's not hard to find really cheap EEPROM reader/writers that are little more than a USB microcontroller on a board.

[RoGeorge]

What about an EEPROM programmer? Are they, pretty much, all able to programme all, pretty much, chips?

Unless you need to program industrial quantities of hundreds of EEPROMs daily, a dedicated programmer looks like a waste to me.

You seem interested in a 3D printer.
That will be a nice addition to your lab, go for it!   

[Mr. Scram]

An Ender 3 Pro or V2 would be an excellent choice if you want a 3D printer. Don't skimp to save 10 or 20 bucks as most $150 printers will be a pain in comparison.

[PerranOak]

Brilliant, thanks everyone. Some great ideas there, some I'd never have thought of.

[Brumby]

You can find a lot of that here.

Sometimes it's stuff that you wish you hadn't .....