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What online electronics tools can/do you use to replace physical ones?

cstanton

While following along with defcon being online this year, people are trying to analyse the badge for the conference this year, which is a cassette tape. Part of that is that people want to see what the audio of the tape looks like on an oscilloscope...

 

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Though with the lockdown happening not everyone has access to that right now, so people found there's one online:

 

https://dood.al/oscilloscope/

 

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Have you used a tool like this? Or is there another physical tool that you're able to simulate?

  • In the TI Robotics Systems Learning Kit there is a software tool called TExaS that can be used to measure voltage and certain waveforms or digital timing from the MSP432 microcontroller on the PC if I remember correctly.  I was able to use it but having an oscilloscope and multimeter at hand is highly preferable and since I have them that is what I used for the RoadTest.  I have used my smart phone to measure sound level and frequency which was handy (but maybe not overly accurate).  In any case, the best tools are ones that you can get your hands on (virtual or otherwise).

  • There are tools that I have found useful for working on electronics.  I have used MatLab to simulate signal processing (both mathematically and programmatically).  This was very handy when software development time on the actual hardware was limited (co-development or extensive hardware testing needs), or when I wanted to visualize the data in realtime.

     

    I also remember using a hardware debugger to export data to Excel, via DDE to create a virtual oscilloscope, plotting variables in charts from my embedded platform.

  • I don't know if it qualifies as a tool, but the biggest one that comes to mind is a replacement for paper. I used to have a large library of text books, manuals and data books and all designs involved lots of paper.

    Online catalogs, datasheets, reference designs, examples, calculators, CAD, simulators, manuals, repositories, forums, databases, articles, information, multimedia, tutorials and data have replaced a large amount of paper.

  • Not sure if this classifies under tools, but am sharing this because this has been very much helpful for me during this lockdown. Since currently, I am in a different location away from where I have my hardware tools and kits.

     

    Raspberry Pi Azure IoT Online Simulator - https://azure-samples.github.io/raspberry-pi-web-simulator/

     

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    I was in need of a device to send and receive data to and from Azure IoT Hub. So this simulator served the purpose. It has been programmed to simulate a Raspberry Pi connected to a temperature and humidity sensor (BME280) and it also has a red LED that blinks on every successful message sent to the Azure IoT Hub.

     

    Below is one such message sent to the Azure IoT Hub,

     

    Sending message: {"messageId":4,"deviceId":"Raspberry Pi Web Client","temperature":29.45097208558087,"humidity":60.38125184508826} >  Message sent to Azure IoT Hub

     

    These messages are then saved using Azure Stream Analytics in an Azure Table as shown in the screenshot below.

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  • in reply to genebren

    Good one MATLAB is a very useful and powerful tool. I have used it to create a system that gets data from Arduino, then uses it for Machine Learning and then plot it in a GUI as shown below.

     

    If interested please check this link for Arduino programming using MATLAB and Simulink  - https://www.mathworks.com/discovery/arduino-programming-matlab-simulink.html

     

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