hi rizek,
I am building my electronic lab for the first time.
From scratch you need all these ? You've never own any such devices ?
FIY, I do some mods on my hifi gear too. But only on the digital chain. Reinventing the wheel by building your own amplifier is a complet waste of time & money given that you have state-of-art "pro" active speakers at nice price that outperfom like hell any passive "hifi" setup. On the digital chain there is room for improvements ; but creating you own DAC or digital interface is a waste of time & money => doing some mods on the PCB of a DAC is far more efficient. Reinventing the wheel to end up to a square wheel is...
Mainly will focus on analog audio projects and hopefully I'll dive into DSP in the future.
You'll work on high currents (amplifier), or digital chain (3.3V max on PCBs, tiny current) ?
After a long research on this forum, I have decided on these instruments;
Siglent SDS804X HD ~ 490€
a scope is usefull => +1
BUT why this model with low BW ?
To me, it's better to put money on the scope (than DMM...) : have in mind that, like said above, you can get a SDS2104X+ at "nice" price, and thanks to nice guys from this forum, you'll be able to "upgrade" it to full option + 500MHz BW !
Siglent SDG1032X ~ 350€
useless given that most of scopes have a wav gen included that can help => 350Eur saved !
GW Instek GPP-4323 ~ 700€
To me, this is useless... unless you really need it. You need it ?
I say that because for instance in digital interfaces, we have some 1VDC / 1.2V /3.3VDC max (to simplify). Given that, you can use a 5V/2A SMPS (USB charger) to feed a basic circuit with a 3.3V LDO eg => and you have a tiny/efficient 3.3VDC power supply : 1 output only, but cost = few Euro only !
=> 700Eur saved !
Agilent 34401 ~ 600€ OR Keithley 2000 ~450€ OR Siglent 3065X ~ 800€
As someone mentionned it above : why so much money for that ?
A fairly nice & not expensive multimeter (basic DIYer multimeter, <100Eur) will give the info you need ! You need to know the voltage, if somewhere on the pcb we have 1V or 3.3V => to do that, any basic multimeter will do the job (and more of course...).
The relevant info is not the dead accurate value, it's more : the DC waveform (given by a scope), the ripple etc...
500Eur saved !
Open to hear any suggestions.
Here my list of usefull devices !
- a JBC soldering station : expensive ? not at all because : it will last many years / you'll be able to solder any stuff down to sub-millimeter sizes !
- a stereomicroscope => Amscope of course ! I have this one =>
https://eleshop.eu/szm7045xt-stl2.html (to add : LED-ring & barlow x0.5 ; useless => a camera)
With this scope, the whole world of tiny compoments is wide open to you, dead easy soldering of SMD passives down to 0201. With some tricks, you can even solder this kind of bad boy =>
https://www.mouser.fr/ProductDetail/Texas-Instruments/TPS6208833YFPR?qs=fAHHVMwC%252BbgZiei1VAGw0w%3D%3D (I admit I can't do it if I've drunk too much coffee). Ice on the cake : with a microscope, you use only SMD parts, no more through-hole => big saving on parts !
Plus these "basics" of any DIYer
- a LiteVNA (160Eur)
- a TinySA Ultra (125Eur)
- a TinyPFA (75Eur)
- Shannon Tweezers (140Eur)
My 2 cents...
rizek, feel free to correct me of course
we're just talking about a funny hobby