Hi everyone,
I'm a software engineer who about a year ago started on the adventure of learning electronics, with relatively modest hobbyist ambitions. I originally focused on trying to get a decent beginner understanding of analog fundamentals but lately have been drawn more toward digital logic circuits (occupational hazard perhaps).
The above is the work bench I've slowly put together over the past year. As you can see my toolset at the moment is quite bare, with just a lab PSU, a DMM and a companion laptop. I'm now crossing that bridge where I don't want to go further without bringing in an oscilloscope for learning/discovery, and perhaps also a dedicated logic analyzer (replacing MCU-based hacks and homebrew code I've used so far for capture and decoding when needed by projects, since at least lines of code I can swing easily).
New equipment will need table space and I want to get rid of the laptop on the table by hanging a screen on the peg board and hiding a mini PC under the table, reducing the on-table footprint to a small Bluetooth keyboard+touchpad thing I already have. Brings me to my concrete ask for the round:
To fill my emerging oscilloscope and LA needs, I've not yet ruled out going the route of the PicoScopes and Saleaes. I will likely buy a more traditional benchtop scope initially (of the usual Siglent-ish variety), but I can see myself wanting tools like the former eventually, especially a nice LA for greater convenience in digital projects. It's all about not
having to (re)build custom tools all the time.
For the mini PC to hook these up to, I'm currently looking at fanless design like the Celeron J4125-based 8 gig RAM Mele Quieter2. This compares pretty well to the aging ultrabook I currently have on the table, anyway.
But I have 0 experience with the PC performance requirements of USB-based scope/LA solutions. Are these applications (which I'd run on Linux if possible) a good fit to something like a J4125 or should I aim for a more powerful host PC for these?
The vendor websites actually don't go into great details, which gives me a general "you'll be fine" vibe, but I'd like to hear from folks with practical experience using this gear.