Home labs of electronics engineers?

Why does Illya have soooo very many Multimeters? It's not fair he has more than me ...he's very scarey ..Shabaz make him go away !!

Not only does he have them but he really knows how to make them stand up and do tricks. He is a master of the Keithley DMM.

Yeah Keithley are good. Bagged myself a Keithley THD2015 recently..recommended it to Shabaz only to find he already got one

Hi Andy,

Lol. LEDs are in some ways the ultimate test tool all round : ) So compact, and so many uses in troubleshooting : ) since they don't load some circuits much at all (less than an analog multimeter!).

Other easy-to-obtain test tools are a radio, and an audio amplifier, and any microcontroller board for general circuit stimulation and capturing data. I like jw0752 use of a clock as a test tool - very much a 'What would MacGyver do'

method of rapidly deploying equipment nearby to solve test problems.

There can be never enough precision instruments. Man with one multimeter knows exactly what is the voltage measurement. Man with two multimeters - have no idea what is actual voltage. So I asked myself how many multimeters can tell you true voltage quest :). Still have two units to repair. I like messing with test instruments, and learning how big boys design them. And what can be better than getting broken one and trying to fix it in way of learning? Have still Model 2000 to repair to complete current Keithley DMMs collection.

You could probably string up a little something on a bit of Vero or similar  have a cheap FM module or even a few transistors and make  an AM/FM Radio then a cheep 386 for an Audio amp  have some jumpers going into the amp so you could choose your source etc. All cheap quick and dirty whilst been a learning tool for the "new players".

Yeah agreed, I must have 3 precision ones and the same again basic ones so I really don't know what any voltage is

Nice to see you are spending time to repair them..I bet you are learning loads... Have you checked out Dave Jones' EEVBlog he does a lot of equipment videos  or Signal Path as an alternative

That's not a bad idea, Radio Shack/Tandy used to sell a test amplifier with small speaker based on an LM386 too, the high gain on that chip is useful for test purposes! I think some logic probes had an audio output too (another fun project I guess!).

Yeah a whole group of little projects like that could make a nice series of instructional blog  posts

You're on, we could investigate a joint audio test amp or simplified probe project, hopefully these are quick things, which is always good!