Home labs of electronics engineers?

Well I was brave enough to share my junk LAB way back so here is the new and improved version

and through the door to the right is my workstation (A little messy)

Yes thats a PI 2 on the desk with full Windows 10 IoT with a 480*320 touch screen all fully functional, the top left screen is the PI HDMI output . No its not mirroring on to the LCD...Sorry. The LDC has a screen capture on it of the HDMI screen and it is verlayed with touch zones so I can still effectivly click the buttons with finger/pen and have it perform the same as the HDMI with a mouse (I will be posting all the code etc later today with luck)

Definitely makes me jealous, how did you acquire your gear. Thats one of my big questions for people with these nice labs how did you get all the gear with out paying the big bucks or did you guys do that ?

K

some of my equipment came from surplus stores and ebay. a couple are from the road test program here. a few are from a retired family member. some are even from the local collage dumpster. a piece or two are from beta testing. have some homebrew pieces made from stuff just laying around. my investment is relatively low. but it has been years in the making.

I'm the one with the not-so-fancy lab in this thread most of my gear is 2nd hand.

• Scope 2nd hand, paid with what I got for my old CRT scope + 10€.
• Metex 4-in-1 :  3 power supplies, dmm, function generator, universal counter. 2nd hand, 50€ (Yes, humble, but very usefull and a place saver).
• Philips tripple power supply: 2nd hand, about 70€.
• soldering station: new, paid with an appreciation  voucher that I received from my company.
• other multimeter: bought for my electronics studies in the early 80's - still going strong.

Most of my instruments are between 20 and 40 years old. I made some from scratch or from kits back when they had kits. The only thing new is a low end Rigol Scope I got a year and a half ago. It is best to accumulate equipment as the need presents itself. To go out and buy a bunch of equipment without growing into it probably means it will sit unused on your shelves.

John

I thik everyone of us made his personal tools "collection" in some unconventional way The mill machine architecture base (the heavy metal part and the spindle comes from a gift of a client some years ago, then all the rest has done by me. The soldering station is not a station but a solder and I am waiting the first good opportunity to have one decent. The dremel was an offer from a friend that own a electornic components shop in Italy few years ago. some protocol analysers comes from a client in China that supported me with some expensive tools. Then take also in account that many other stuff, llike the Mac (very expensive as are an iMac and two macbook Pro plus two old white macbook or other stuff (multi function printer, scanner, the Western Digital NAS are part of the work cost of me and my wife, as we work at home and there is the advantage that there is only one architecture for all so many costs are shared.

Enrico

read the additional post, I list the gear and its source and tips for new players in the game of blogging and posting and helping in the community

Note the "Years in the Making", it takes much time and effort to slowly build up a good lab but you can do it if your serious and will invest the time

Note the "Years in the Making", it takes much time and effort to slowly build up a good lab but you can do it if your serious and will invest the time

I certainly have Peter it's all of an up hill struggle really.

Worth while if you are in the biz of pumping for Subs

Peter Oakes wrote:

 

Note the "Years in the Making", it takes much time and effort to slowly build up a good lab but you can do it if your serious and will invest the time

A lot of kit here is actually as old as some of the younger members so that shows you ow long people have been collecting these bits of kit!

several pieces in my collection are older than myself.

Yep test equipment normally has a long life.

I'm keeping the office photo thing off the list until I've at least cleaned it up