As electrical engineer, there have been a lot of stuff used before,

like this electric tube Oscilloscope,

And This Cursor Caliper, plastic one,

And this multimeter,

or this multimeter,

All of them are basic instrument very useful to me, before. Now, as educational  purpose only or as toy for EE.

But I am also with special experience in High Voltage and Ultra High Voltage Apparatus, as high as 1000kV. That is totally different spectrum but comply with same physical principle.

The most demanding case for Instruments and tools is when you are high above the ground 100m meter on 1000kV transmission line tower, like this one.

Take one snap-shot from National Geography below,

The transmission line with hundreds of kilometer long can be self-energized from static electron, enough to shock a person. There are also rare cases when On-line Maintenance in Faraday Cage is a must-choice. There is no joke if one tool or meter is missing.

I have chances overseeing the construction of 220kV transmission lines. That is really high-risk task, and with some sort of fun.

In Tik Tok App, some young men take short videos and show their acorbat skills in walking, running, or swirling along the steel reinforce aluminum wires. Normally ,there is no mechanic lift, these young men shall climb the tower by hands and feet in the morning, carrying food of the day,  taking naps even falling into sleep if over-exhasusted. They are heavy-paid, but I think it worth the cost.

So out of office and workbench, portable tools and meters are important, and do not forget to bring them if high abover the ground there.

I've been up to remote mountaintop repeater sites many times where the only access method is via helicopter. There was one particular time where the radio equipment in one of these shelters was acting erratic, and we were suspecting a board level fault, but I didn't bring a scope up with me because of weight restrictions, so I had to make some educated guesses (card swapping) until we found the faulty board.

Would have been a heck of  a lot easier if I'd brought the right gear!

I'm a robotics researcher by trade and I occasionally get to collaborate internationally on certain projects. One amazing opportunity was to develop a submersible ROV capable of characterising the internals of the Japanese Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant that became damaged in 2011 due to a tsunami.

I had to go and demonstrate the ROV in a test facility in Japan and was incredibly nervous taking a tube with lots of wires coming out of it and ball-bearings for ballast through airport security.... Anyway, that was all fine, but I got to one of the most remote parts of Japan currently in the Fukushima prefecture, and needed to demonstrate this robot. Obviously, it broke in transit because "AIRPORT BAGGAGE HANDLERS LOVE CHUCKING FRAGILE THINGS!!!"

Connections had come loose, communications between certain modules was not working, and, although I thought I had been prepared in bringing a soldering iron to make fixes, it didn't work in Japan because of the voltage difference... Cue utter panic that we'd gone all that way for nothing! (on a mechanical side, airport handlers had somehow managed to crush some water pumps that were surrounded in foam, in a legitimate peli-case. Diabolical)

Fortunately, it is not a sad story as I eventually got everything up and running (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9E3a110n-lA&t=3s), but being able to have some measurement tools on the go to test what was going wrong would be just incredibly helpful for robotics field tests. Something ALWAYS no matter how hard you prepare, goes wrong!!! A "pocket" oscilloscope was right at the top of a wish list for checking things like the communications between modules and that the correct signals were passed to each actuator.

Super cool giveaway guys, and keeping my fingers crossed you like the story!

Any engineer has experienced the needs of a personal tool...

It happens every time you need somebody to borrow you an oscilloscope, or a multimeter or a current probe...

At the same time your're asking for a tool, the same tool is urgent for several other high priority activities!!!

And, as always, the discussion is closed with a sentence: "The tool is mine !!!"

It looks like when I was child...

" this is my ball... "

Save an engineer !

Make me win the giveaway contest !

When I visited my grandparents house this december their tv remote was not working. I am currently an undergraduate in electronics, so my grandfather had high hopes on me that I would repair the remote. I tried everything I could do with my multimeter and try and find out the fault in the device. But I could not find a way to check if the microcontroller itself was working properly or not for which I needed an oscilloscope so badly. Its very frustating when you dont have what you need at the right moment. When I started searching for handheld oscilloscopes online  I came across this giveaway so I thought why not share my real experience which could win me a real oscilloscope.

-sai charan

Twenty-odd years ago, I looked after the IT infrastructure for a firm of accountants in London, UK. I went into the office one Sunday afternoon to update the firmware on the Compaq fileserver while nobody was using the system. (This was in the days before people could work remotely. It was also before network-attached storage devices were commonplace, unfortunately!)

Before starting work on the server, I checked the logs to see if the latest backups had worked, just in case. They had, so I was good to go. Having installed the new firmware, imagine the sick feeling in my stomach when the server refused to boot up ("error in hardware abstraction layer").

I couldn't restore from backup because I couldn't boot the device! I couldn't restore from the system CDs because I couldn't boot the device.

OK. This was not my fault but we had 40 people coming into work the next day, expecting to find their working files so they could get on with their work. Even worse, I was booked to go to a client site in Bath that day so I wouldn't even be there to face the music.

There was nothing I could do there and then, and the support company was closed, of course. Fortunately, I had a spare Windows server at home and (more importantly), the exact same HP DAT tape backup device. So, I drove home across london and spent the rest of Sunday restoring the work backup onto my home server. By about 11 o'clock in the evening, I had it all done and raced back across town and installed it in place of the "dead" server. Mine was a bit slower but it worked. I arranged for the support company to come in while I was in Bath to rebuild the "dead" one. Apparently, it took them all day!

Nooooooo!

...and if you prefer an indoor climbing job then there is always arena rigging

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcDtBzMcmHA

"...but your ladders are in a different league!"

There's always a 1768' guided tower climb if you want a bit of exercise / vertigo...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2A_h2AjJaMw

The Millau Viaduct inspection climb is another interesting climb as the tallest pylon is around 250m plus then the 87m mast on top of it. Just a pity that there are 7 pylons to inspect...

I have often found myself at the top of a ladder without the tool I needed, but your ladders are in a different league!