EEVblog #954 - How To Setup An Electronics Lab For $300

hi one of my most popular videos is how to set up an electronics lab or a decent electronics lab it's got over half a million views and I'll link it in down below if you haven't seen it now there was a whole ton of stuff in this video it actually came to a total of just over $1500 or thereabouts and since this video came out I've had countless people ask me can I set up a half-decent electronics lab for a couple hundred bucks well let's give it a go we're gonna have to go ultra cheap but I think we can do it and sorry upfront I cannot possibly cater for all different prices in all different countries and things like that so I'm just going to assume that you're based in the u.s. here first up of course we'll look at test gear now you've got to have a multimeter and hey we can't be picky here we've got to go ultra cheap we're not worried about safety and every quote build quality everything else we have to go cheap as chips I'm going to keep it under 15 bucks delivered so you search for everything under 15 bucks a lot of them are manual range probably the majority of them but I'd actually recommend an auto ranging multimeter like this unity UT 136 B or maybe something like this one which curiously they do actually compared to the 136 B so there you go both of those under 15 bucks delivered the UT 136 B has been reviewed by our light edges from the eevblog forum and it's going to do the business for 15 bucks hey and if you can afford it get two of them so that you can compare them against each other and use them for measuring voltage and current as well probably the most expensive thing you're going to have in your lab is an oscilloscope it's an essential tool to see inside electronics now a lot of people will say this analog discovery 259 bucks more blown the budget right they're not good enough they did have a student version at $99 but unbeliev now it's up to one hundred and fifty nine dollars but I think we really need to keep this under 100 bucks for an oscilloscope but a lot of people say get one of these DSO nanos for 88 bucks on eBay no these are crap little fiddly annoying toys don't get one of those get like a USB oscilloscope you've almost certainly got a computer laptop whatever a USB oscilloscope lasts something like and oh one this oh one or a hand tech one will do the business there to at least reasonably no one names in the business now this hand tech one here at sixty bucks 20 megahertz two channels you know it's okay but it's not isolated and it's got like only a couple of K of memory not a high sample rate 48 Meg samples per second this one is at $77 is a little bit better in terms that it actually has a logic analyzer built-in 16-channel so it's basically the same thing but logic analyzer that's worth it if you want the logic analyzer or probably a better thing here is this oh one you can actually get it a bit cheaper at about eighty one dollars but I recommend this 98 dollars if you can afford it for this isolated one it's the I model it's got USB isolation I've done a whole video on how not to blow up your oscilloscope LinkedIn down below so and any one of those choices will probably do the business now as for a power supply these are one of the classic projects you can build yourself and from various scrap parts and many options to do your own power supplies but if you just want to get up and running Hey look you can get them for as little as forty two US bucks delivered for your classic you know 30 volt three or five amp power supply really should have one of these at least and as for function generators well you can pick these up for as little as 15 bucks little kits like their switch you know they're not high frequency but you can generate basic sine square our triangle do DDS stuff so it's certainly worth having some way to I generate signals so yep they're well worth the money for a soldering iron I recommend you actually go to hobby King and get at least a temperature-controlled soldering station there as little as 11 bucks look at this absolutely incredible but the one I recommend and I've done a video on this before is this hey Co ripoff it's the you 9 36 it's a ripoff of the hakko 936 I believe it even takes heyco tips so you can get reasonable tips from it's going to do the business and the best thing about having a heyco compatible iron is that you can use these hako compatible ripoff tips we can't afford the genuine ones so we're going to have to settle for a full buck kit like this they're not going to last long but they're going to do the job and you need these are chisel types and you can even get the well type for doing that drag solder in as well I've done a whole video on how to do our SMD drag soldering but yeah that's an absolute no-brainer because the conical tips that come with the solder knives usually they're pretty useless so you need the chisel type and the wells and big fat ones for doing bigger stuff and things like that and another area where I hate to skimp but we have no choice is solder in not only soldering iron but the solder as well but hey for a couple of bucks we can get a roll of once again I recommend not 0.5 millimeters or smaller not point three millimeters for something like that of both get yourself both letter and lead-free solder like this so you know you can get those reasonably cheaply we can't afford a quality multi-core brand at you know 30 or 40 bucks a roll or something like that and also flux very important get yourself a flux pen or a couple of these cheapo flux pens it'll make a surface mount and other solder and stuff much easier and while you're at it you might as well pick up one of these tip cleaners as well and to clean up soldering you have to get some solder wick so as some of this side good week it works okay and get different art with ones that you know a large one and a very narrow one millimeter type one as well and you can get a set of cheap-ass tweezers on eBay for four bucks yeah it'll do the job and you're going to need side cutters and you can get those for a couple of bucks each make sure you get the flush ones though there allows you to cut pins right on the board at the exact height you want actually make sure you'll get at least two of these one for just hacking stuff and one-third that you keep in really good condition the jaws on so that you can cut nice and cleanly and well you might as well get like a cheaper set of like all your regular pliers and stuff like that not great but they're for a couple of bucks now you can spend money on a fume extractor if you really want but hey you can just start salvage some old gear get the you know 12 volt DC fan out and hook it up your power supply and just have that blow the fumes away so they're not in-your-face and as far as magnification for surface mount stuff goes we can't do much on this sort of budget so yeah just one of these are in ocular type things for 10 bucks might have to do you sorry and well if these USB microscopes are so cheap you might as well pick one up as well for being a really close up SMD work they're pretty crusty but and they kind of do the job and you got to have a hot snot glue gun so yeah make sure you get some snot with it too now something that's nice to have is a hookup wire kit different colors 22 gauge maybe different gauges if you can afford it of course you can always skimp you you can always like scrap gear and get all the wires out and stuff like that if you really want and some of this 30 gauge wire wrapping wire or mod wire as it's called very handy and of course you're going to need a breadboard so I'll probably recommend one of these breadboard kits every man these dogs doing these so you know really choose your flavor I mean you know they start from like seven bucks with a tiny little breadboard usually you want bigger than that of course but you know it's got all sorts of parts and other things in these kits so yeah just you know get one that might be suitable view you know preferably with these little jumper wires as well they're really quite nice but I don't know you've got to spend maybe 20 or 30 bucks on a breadboard kit so something like this one here looks really good it's a reasonable size breadboard it's got all the jumper wires and stuff like that that'll get you started and of course you're going to need some vero board matrix board strip board so you can get the ones with just the plated holes on there very handy you can go for like are these little kits like this you can get a whole bunch of them for bugger-all and then you're going to need some vero board as well which actually has these strips all the way down like that so then in various types and sizes you can even get ones like these that I simulate the layout of bread boards they can be handy as well so just get a few different types now of course you've got to stock up on components and thankfully our resistor kits these days are cheap as chips look at this 500 pieces 50 values you're going to need some quarter what through-hole ones like these absolutely amazing prices and you're going to need SMD resistant kits as well so i would recommend getting um at least Oh 8 oh five 1206 and 900 603 as well they're all like their cheapest chips so go for it stock up on these kits through oh and SMD and likewise for capacitor kits here I highly recommend getting some through-hole ceramics and of course SMD once again you know Oh 805 is a nice size Oh 603 is a bit small and stuff like that and also electrolytic kits as well you can get various ones of those so just some mix of electrolytic SAR ceramic SMDs and ceramic through-hole should do the business and it's not as common to use inductors but if you need them you need them so it just gets them through whole inductors as well and transistors as well SMD and through-hole various types and also our diodes as well and probably get yourself one of these lead kits these are very handy as well three and five millimeter leg kits you know these things are only like five bucks delivered for a lot of this stuff and and handy to have one of these are Zener diode assortment kits as well once again five bucks very well spent for all those values two volts to thirty nine volts it's a no-brainer some of these little adjustable power supply buck converters for like you know less than a buck fifty each worth having a couple of these in your junk bins no worries and surely some people are going to ask well you know get some ID we nose and stuff like that and other electronics kits in this tight you know you just search for electronics kit on electronic starter kit on eBay and everyone's selling things like these these days and they're so cheap so you know maybe if you know a microcontroller kit or something like that if you want to get started yet no worries so there you have it there's an example of how to set up an electronics lab really cheaply using mostly stuff from eBay and all those trilateral agreements and everything else that they have in place that make it so ridiculously cheap free to get stuffed shipped from China it's absolutely ridiculous and that you can pick up all these resistor kits and all sorts of stuff for like one or two dollars delivered it's absolutely amazing so there you go for like three hundred and thirty dollars there I know this is not going to suit everyone and if you're into various other things you might want various other stuff microcontrollers Arduino is whatever if you're into logic analysis and protocol stuff you're going to want different types of tools and stuff like that but multimeter oscilloscope solar e9 power supply a bored kid wires and basic component kits magnification and véro boards and stuff like that microscope that can pretty much get you up and running for an electronics lab it's fantastic for like around you know not much over 300 bucks so I hope you found that really useful I'll try and put in links down below but yeah these things just search for yourself on ebay and other spaces you might be able to get them on Amazon as well but they're generally a bit more expensive in the US and stuff like that and if you're anywhere else in the world yet sorry it might be a bit different um generally you can get stuff from eBay pretty much anywhere in the world ship from my China post it might just be a few more dollars for postage and stuff like that so I hope you found that really useful if you did please give it a big thumbs up if you want to discuss it links down below eevblog for all that sort of stuff leave comments catch you next time you

Channel: EEVblog

Views: 500,246

Keywords: eevblog, video, electronics lab, how to, oscilloscope, multimeter, lab, electronics, breadboard, power supply

Id: HicV3Z6XLFA

Length: 12min 23sec (743 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 10 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/lm723]

I hate these sorts of videos. Signed up to have a rant about it. This is just pissing $300 out of the window. Some real advice, from 30 years experience of doing this on a relatively low budget:

1. Always start with a project, not with the goal of populating your lab, then buy what you need to complete the project. You will eventually end up with a stock of equipment and parts. This just happens. Don't plan too far into the future up front.

2. Don't buy cheap Chinese shit. Buy good quality parts and good quality equipment. I've watched people spend hours working on something to find that parts have failed, are out of tolerance or are simply not what they said they were. Same with equipment.

3. You don't have to buy new equipment. There is lots of second hand kit out there which is a much better deal. If it's broken, even better; you'll learn something fixing it which is where you can really derive value from eevblog forum etc.

4. Don't hoard equipment and parts. If you don't foresee you needing something in the future, get rid of it on ebay. Stay focused, stay tidy, stay clean and you will actually complete stuff. You can get it again if you need it. You don't need 2 full 42U racks of Tektronix 7000 kit.

5. Make some extra cash to fund your projects, therefore removing the $300 limit. Buy broken equipment, fix it and sell it. You will learn a lot in the process, you will make some cash and you'll help someone else out who needs something that works.

6. Don't fall victim to lab envy. This is a killer. If you look at EEVblog forum, there are lots of people who have stacked labs yet none of these people seems to have designed and built anything significant. Any idiot can buy something and put it on display but how many of these people can sit down with some discrete parts and put something together from scratch? Spend some time instead of money.

7. Buy manageable stuff. If you're doing typical amateur projects, don't start out with a top end Hakko station, a microscope and ten books of 0805's. You're going to screw up several times when you design stuff unless you already know what you're doing and will need to rework regularly. Just stick with through hole, pluggable breadboards (low frequency) or deadbug construction (high frequency) and move your design later if it needs it. It's cheap, quick, easy to manage, easy to rip up and retry and doesn't require any special tools.

8. Learn to make do. A lot of the kit we see these days is a recent innovation. Back in the distant past, many incredible things were built without a scope for example. You can get a LONG way with just a cheap $5 DMM and a linear wall wart for example.

[u/silvses]

There are function generator apps on Iphones, audio being the output. Could anyone confirm if this works?

[u/kken]

I am a bit sceptical about the USB microscope recommendation. I had nothing but trouble with these cheap devices.

[u/Enlightenment777]

SMD 0805 Resistor Book - 221 resistance values - 25 of each value:

USD$20.58 - http://www.ebay.com/itm/112223305407

Breadboard prototype parts (1 week ship time to USA):

http://www.taydaelectronics.com

[u/nikomo]

Thinking about picking up a cheap USB oscilloscope, been mainly looking at stuff supported by Sigrok since it's multiplatform, and the manufacturer's own software is always crap.

So far, the two options seem to be the Sainsmart DDS120 and the Hantek 6022BE. The 6022BL would be nicer, but Sigrok only supports the logic analyzer on it right now, no analog functionality.