Do I need more test equipment?

[Aldo22]

TinySA wow cheap, they any good?

I would say TinySA and NanoVNA are definitely worth the money and so cheap that you don't have to think twice.
But they are complex devices and you have to learn a bit.

Of course you get better devices for more money, but with these two you have enough to do for a start. 

See: https://www.tinysa.org/wiki/

[metebalci]

When working on a specific digital protocol, particularly complex ones like USB, protocol decoders can be very useful.

Probably not relevant, but VNA is an impressive instrument. Most of them are very expensive, not very easy to use, but I learned a lot even trying to use a simple one, so I also +1 to simple ones like NanoVNA just for what can be learnt from it.

It might not be a need now, but I also +1 to current and differential probes. If you are interested in the power usage, there are relatively new, simple and cheap source measure units for microcontrollers. Source measure units are usually quite expensive.

[chrisb741]

LA wont record analog signals

[TomKatt]

This is because they usually can steam data to the PC or even use compression so you can record Giga or even Tera samples worth of data in a single capture. So it allows you to record for multiple seconds or even multiple minutes of traffic. So no need to trigger on the area of interest and keep rerunning your test, you can just record it all and then scroll trough it at your own pace. Looking trough this much data is much easier with a mouse as opposed to knobs on a scope. So for that reason i prefer it when looking at something like a SPI or I2C sensor or picking apart a UART firmware update protocol or something.

This is the reason I bought a DS Logic Plus LA.  Decoding on many 'hobbyist' scopes is often limited to what can be displayed on the screen.  In addition to longer captures, a decent LA also offers more triggering options like pattern, cmd or address matching that can help locate data of interest.

[chrisb741]

What is a good logic analyser? Surely the $10 can't be that good

[TomKatt]

What is a good logic analyser? Surely the $10 can't be that good

Don't knock the cheap clones - for many tasks they can do what you need and the open source Sigrock software has a lot of decoding options.   The main limitation with the cheap clones is their lower bandwidth and lack of onboard memory (they also lack input protection and I think have fewer triggering options).  If you go the cheap route I would check out the Sigrok wiki for supported hardware to make sure the clone you are looking at is fully supported.  https://sigrok.org/wiki/Supported_hardware#Logic_analyzers

When I bought my LA a few years ago I shopped around and the DS Logic Plus seemed like the best overall value, offering 400Mhz max sample rate and 16G sample depth with the option to stream real time data over usb for $150 (closer to $100 on eBay).  DS Logic has their own proprietary fork of Sigrok named DS View that I've found very easy to use and has many decoding options.  400Mhz sample rate is good for 100Mhz data signals.

Other popular alternatives are the Saleae Logic 8 and Digilent's Digital Discovery, but both are also more expensive.

https://www.dreamsourcelab.com/shop/logic-analyzer/dslogic-plus/

Edit - just a caution that if you search the web you will find a lower cost model from DS Logic sold overseas (non "Plus") - but that is an older, less capable version that was discontinued a while back.  Not sure if these asian sellers have old stock or if they are knockoffs (more likely).  Avoid the 'non-Plus' version.

[dmulligan]

You have made bigger gambles at restaurants or bars than one of these logic analyzers will cost you.  For $7-10 you will be surprised at how capable it is while working with an Arduino and other microcontrollers.  The bandwidth is high enough for many of those applications and you can still fall back to your oscilloscope for your high bandwidth needs.

TLDR; For $10 try it, you might like it.

[tggzzz]

LA wont record analog signals

Oscilloscope won't record digital signals, it only records analogue waveforms. Whatever receives such analogue waveforms may interpret them as digital signals.

A primary use case of an oscilloscope is to observe the analogue waveforms to ensure that they should be correctly interpreted by the receiver - typically voltage levels, transition times, setup and hold times.

After a scope has shown correct "signal integrity" (a sub-discipline in its own right), then it is often better to switch to the digital domain, and use digital tools such as logic analysers, protocol analysers, and printf() statements.

[TomKatt]

You have made bigger gambles at restaurants or bars than one of these logic analyzers will cost you.  For $7-10 you will be surprised at how capable it is while working with an Arduino and other microcontrollers.  The bandwidth is high enough for many of those applications and you can still fall back to your oscilloscope for your high bandwidth needs.

TLDR; For $10 try it, you might like it.

What I should have said - more succinctly - is that one of those $10 clones potentially offers better serial decoding abilities than the decoding feature built into entry level scopes like the DS1054Z and the SDS1104X etc.

Edit - Amazon has a Sigrok compatible clone with micro-hooks for $14
https://www.amazon.com/KeeYees-Analyzer-Device-Channel-Arduino/dp/B07K6HXDH1

When I first got my LA I hooked it up to a usb serial port and used Putty to loop a few text files and captured the serial data with the LA.  It was an easy way to play around and learn the LA software, especially for things like pattern matching.  Then I programmed an AVR to do the same idea over SPI etc.  It's helpful when you have known good data to play with, so when the time comes to debug something you know how to set the software up.

[JOFlaherty]

This is more of a tool than a piece of test equipment, but a multi-row breadboard with an addition: fixed terminals to attach test equipment leads and power supply wires securely. The last 6 inches of the connection can be made by Dupont jumper wires. Then there's less chance of things being pulled out during testing.

[RoGeorge]

What is a good logic analyser? Surely the $10 can't be that good

Try the $10 first, chances to need something more are close to zero for the projects you plan.  A bigger one would be about $100-200  (e.g. https://www.dreamsourcelab.com/shop/logic-analyzer/dslogic-plus/).  It is faster and has more inputs.  Though keep in mind that in practice you can not use it at 400MHz sampling rate anyway.  The LA has that sampling speed for real, just that connecting probes at that speed would be close to impossible.

I remember first time when I got a DSLogic Plus LA, tried to sampled at 400MHz the output generated with another another FPGA.  Almost all the captured edges were choppy before settling to their final value.  I thought the LA was defective or something.  Well, the LA was working fine, just that I didn't know much back then about impedance matching and transmission lines.  The randomly choppy edges I was seeing were because the LA was so fast that it was capturing the reflections back and forth inside the wires.  Probes + PCB traces were acting like transmission lines.

I didn't know I had to match the impedances or else there will be internal reflections in the wires, so I've blamed the LA as buggy/defective, for it can't capture clean edges at 400MHz.  In reality all the edges were ringing as hell because of the impedance mismatch, and the LA was so fast it was able to capture even those ringings. 

Another thing, "Sigrok", which is the software for almost any kind of LA out there, be it $10 or $1000 LA, it is FOSS and supports many kinds of hardware, including oscilloscopes, DMMs etc.
https://sigrok.org/wiki/Supported_hardware

Depending on which oscilloscope you have, might be possible to use it from Sigrok.

Though, the Sigrok drivers for my Rigol DS1054z were not that great, so I never really used Sigrok with the oscilloscope, only with the DSLogic Plus LA (to be more precise, the software name is DSLogic, a fork of PulseView+Sigrok maintained by DreamSource Logic).  PulseView is the GUI, sigrok is the command line backend that get the samples from the hardware and run them through a stack of protocol decoders of your choice.

[CatalinaWOW]

I have literally walls of TE.  And still find that one of things I use most frequently is one of those low cost "transistor testers" like the ones in the following extremely long thread.  For under $20 I think it goes on the need list.  You may be able to do most of what it does with your DMM, but it is really hard to beat the speed and convenience of these things.

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/$20-lcr-esr-transistor-checker-project/

[artag]

> Do I need more test equipment?

Yes.

[RoGeorge]

I have literally walls of TE.  And still find that one of things I use most frequently is one of those low cost "transistor testers" like the ones in the following extremely long thread.  For under $20 I think it goes on the need list.  You may be able to do most of what it does with your DMM, but it is really hard to beat the speed and convenience of these things.

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/$20-lcr-esr-transistor-checker-project/

Indeed, very practical, I have one of those, too.  Bought it only out of curiosity, thinking it would probably be yet another toy of not much use.  In practice, turned out to be very handy, and I am using it way more often than, for example, the LA.

I've seen there is a similar version that can measure even more parameters than the one from the link:

#368: Overview of the Peak Atlas DCA Pro Model DCA75 Semiconductor Component Analyzer & Curve Tracer
w2aew

[KungFuJosh]

I have literally walls of TE.  And still find that one of things I use most frequently is one of those low cost "transistor testers" like the ones in the following extremely long thread.  For under $20 I think it goes on the need list.  You may be able to do most of what it does with your DMM, but it is really hard to beat the speed and convenience of these things.

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/$20-lcr-esr-transistor-checker-project/

I have the TC1 and the TC3 version. For $50, the TC3 version is pretty cool. The DSO and AWG both work okay too.

[chrisb741]

> Do I need more test equipment?

Yes.

Excellent! That's all the arm twisting I need

I have ordered the TinySA Ultra from the official aliexpress store according the the TinySA website. So there is good cheap stuff, you guys think its a good entry into the world of RF, then why not. I have various stuff that can generate RF, just need to find out how to measure it and see what happens

Just to clarify, when I said capture analogue signals, I did not mean the analogue waveform of a digital signal, but an arbitrary analogue level such as voltage representing: light, pressure, temperature, voltage etc.

There is thousands of those cheap LA