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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

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  • Test equipment is very nice to have to track down issues or measure performance, but I am far more interested in inventing, designing, creating and building than test and measurement.

    My goal is to design things that work just as planned as soon as they are assembled, so that testing is not as important as designing.

    It is not a good day when I have to fire up all the test gear to sort out a problem with a new design.

     

    My dream road test would be a Voltera V-One PCB printer. This is the missing link in being able to build a complete project in-house with rapid turn time.

    The world has switched to mostly SMT electronics, but these really require a PCB.

    Custom PCB fab houses can be used, but if you want to be able to build a complete system in-house with modern components, you need to fabricate a PCB in-house.

    It also saves on delivery time, which is important in projects with deadlines, and external delivery time is also inversely proportional to cost.

    Currently, the best practical solution for printing PCBs in-house is to use a Voltera V-One.

     

    Printing PCBs of course requires an application. My current favourite platforms to use are PSoC4 and Arduino MKRs. They are simple enough to include in a road test and powerful enough to handle interesting applications.

     

    Other ideas:

    • A 3D scanner and 3D printer combo would be an awesome road test as well, but is not as directly aligned with electronics.
    • The computer and software are an important, often overlooked tool in electronics design. A nice Intel NUC with CAD software would be a great road test.
    • The blogging side of electronics is also undervalued. A nice camera, decent microphone, studio lights, video editing software would also make a great road test.
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  • Test equipment is very nice to have to track down issues or measure performance, but I am far more interested in inventing, designing, creating and building than test and measurement.

    My goal is to design things that work just as planned as soon as they are assembled, so that testing is not as important as designing.

    It is not a good day when I have to fire up all the test gear to sort out a problem with a new design.

     

    My dream road test would be a Voltera V-One PCB printer. This is the missing link in being able to build a complete project in-house with rapid turn time.

    The world has switched to mostly SMT electronics, but these really require a PCB.

    Custom PCB fab houses can be used, but if you want to be able to build a complete system in-house with modern components, you need to fabricate a PCB in-house.

    It also saves on delivery time, which is important in projects with deadlines, and external delivery time is also inversely proportional to cost.

    Currently, the best practical solution for printing PCBs in-house is to use a Voltera V-One.

     

    Printing PCBs of course requires an application. My current favourite platforms to use are PSoC4 and Arduino MKRs. They are simple enough to include in a road test and powerful enough to handle interesting applications.

     

    Other ideas:

    • A 3D scanner and 3D printer combo would be an awesome road test as well, but is not as directly aligned with electronics.
    • The computer and software are an important, often overlooked tool in electronics design. A nice Intel NUC with CAD software would be a great road test.
    • The blogging side of electronics is also undervalued. A nice camera, decent microphone, studio lights, video editing software would also make a great road test.
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