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In Honor of element14's 10th Birthday: What is Your Favorite RoadTest Bundle?

rscasny

The 10th birthday of element14 is just around the corner. It's quite an accomplishment. I'm sure most online communities come and go, and only a few survive that long. My colleagues have been talking about doing something for this special event. I thought I would throw my hat into the ring, so to speak, and offer up a question for everyone in the RoadTest group to answer. Here it is:image

 

If you had a chance to pick the products to bundle together for a single roadtest, what would they be? We have roadtested a lot of amazing products over the years. From Raspberry Pis to oscilloscopes to connector kits to cool hand tools, and more. What more is there???!!!

 

Be creative and have some fun with this. I don't want to limit you. Think of this in a small way as your "Dream RoadTest." To help you think about your Favorite RoadTest Bundle, I went back and looked at the types of products we have roadtested over the years. They seem to be in the following categories:

 

  • Test Equipment
  • Soldering and Product Equipment (remember the Fume Extractor)
  • Hand Tools
  • Single Board Computers
  • Development Boards (Wireless, IoT, Sensing, Analog, etc.)
  • Antennas
  • Enclosures
  • Connectors
  • Debuggers
  • 3D Printer (back in Christian DeFeo's days)
  • Robot kits

 

To participate, leave a comment below and list the parts of the bundle and a brief explanation of why you chose the parts you included.

 

Sincerely,

 

Randall Scasny

RoadTest Program Manager

  • unfortunately .. haven't received any yet :\

  • On the topic of CNC, there are a number of cheap CNC engravers that can be used to mill PCB traces.

  • in reply to luigimorelli

    It might be helpful if the PS had 3 outputs even if two were fixed at +/- 12, 15, or 18v for op-amp testing.

  • I always tried to explain how things work, in Math, Science and Computer science. Young people is ofteb thirsty of information, for lack of skills in hte teachers or lack of interest inn the mentors.

    I would like to see a bundle of objects for them: many small components pieced together to create a nice (school) lab.

     

    • A stabilized, variable power supply
    • A good tester (testing instrument) for voltage, current, power, resistors, capacitors
    • A transistor tester, able to show the type, the polarity, the beta curves and eventually the equivalents
    • A small-range, dual-track oscilloscope
    • A frequence meter
    • A curve generator (or super-oscillator)

     

    The two pros of such configuration:

     

    1. They are cheap
    2. They can be acquired in kit

  • I would like to suggest for SDRs like LimeSDR or BladeRF or similar, since electronics and communication's simulation go hand-in-hand and the specific hardware driving them like high speed FPGAs Stratix or Kitnex/Virtex.

    Besides, I would also suggest for areas like Bioengineering, high-end prosthesis, and BCI components from OpenBCI's Cyton and the Emotiv's EEG headset as well as bio-augmentation devices like Augmented and Mixed Reality headsets.

  • I am always working with an aircraft simulator, so here goes:

    • A CNC Lathe with a 30" bed and a 3 to 4" swing.
    • A CNC Mill with a work area of about 8 to a 10-inch cube.
    • A Brake with moveable fingers and about 24-in wide
    • A really nice drill press with a Morse Taper mounted Jacobs chuck (1/2"),
    • A nice oscilloscope (stand-alone)  over 4 channels
    • A universal protocol analyzer (RS-232, RS-485, CAN, Ethernet)
    • And a few good power supplies
    • (optional) a nice TIG welder.
  • in reply to shabaz

    Same here the earliest seems to be parts for a DDS and an economy tub of IPA which I used for ages!

  • I liked the idea of the Robot Kits sold by TI as a part of their courses last year. I didn't get a fee one but when out and bought one my self very good kit and a well paced learning resource !

  • As for an hobbyist like myself, with limited access towards more powerful and precise equipment I'd love to see a "Make(r)-your-dream-come==true"-kit. This means that I'd love to upgrade my DIY-benchpowersupply with a new 'semi-professional' one. a standalone oscilloscope (I currently use my computer, soundcard and software if I can), semi-professional multimeter, soldering-station (with added fume-extractor for that sweet safety?), 3D-printer (with different filaments), Laser-engraver/cutter. CNC-machine. A selection of different arduino-boards & shields. Add a hot air-station and/or some sort of FliR.

    Some of my projects has died because my equipment is simple not good/precise enough to make it just the way I want it. This may sound pretentious as it isn't the tools that make the project but not having the tools makes the project alot harder aswell. I can for example build smaller oscillators for small sound-projects but if I wanna use it more musically it gets alot more tricky to get it just right as the tools I got is more suitable for an "max max-oscillator".

  • in reply to dougw

    invite I got from Premier Farnell to join element14 "web portal", way back in June 2009 image.

     

    image

     

    I wasn't sure whether to join or not. It took couple of reminders from them to finally convince me to join on Nov 11, 2009.

     

    Notice the name then: element-14 (with a hyphen). Removal of the hyphen few years later caused me problems, as the page wouldn't load from my saved bookmarks. I thought the site was down and not-maintained anymore. Google came to my rescue, as a quick search identified the name change.

     

    PS: If I remember correct, element14 website was preceded by two editions of Electronic Design for the Global Environment Challenge in 2007 and 2008, organized by Premier Farnell. Most of the people who initially got invited to element14 were participants of those competitions. A quick online search gave me the following two links

    https://www.premierfarnell.com/media-centre/premier-farnell-announces-live-edge-winner

    https://www.premierfarnell.com/media-centre/premier-farnell-announces-live-edge-2008-its-international-100000-usd-challe…