Comment by exDM69 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by exDM69 | Hacker News Reader

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A hobbyist grade electronics lab doesn't need a lot of space and it's not super expensive either. You can get a lot of projects done with tools and components that fit in a shoe box.

Learning electronics is easier than ever before. You can buy smartphone-sized oscilloscopes for less than $200 or even use your smartphone or computer as an oscilloscope/signal generator if you work with audio frequencies. Or plug in a microcontroller board for a few bucks.

You can find textbooks (e.g. [0]) freely online which would've cost you a fortune back in the day (and still do if you want it on paper).

And finally... We still can buy through hole electronics components you can plug into a breadboard. They are obsolete for almost all industrial uses but still widely available. The supply is dwindling but most common components can still be bought.

I am a bit afraid of what will happen when we can no longer buy components in a large form factor that you can solder by hand or stick in a breadboard.

[0] https://archive.org/details/art-of-electronics-3e

Just curious, I see many people comment on buying or having a oscilloscope for beginning electronics.

My question is how many people actually use these devices for anything other than trivial purposes these days?

I feel that mine just collects dust and takes up space and does not compare to my multimeter which is probably my most used tool, but maybe I'm missing something.

This is for learning electronics. It's very satisfying to see the actual waveform of, for example, an R and a C and to be able to see the effect of changing their values. Or to figure out what you've connected wrong when what you see is not what you expect.

From my limited experience, oscilloscopes are useful while learning since you can see what is happening in the circuit. For example, you can build an oscillator or filter circuit then have a visual of the results.

In terms of needing one: no, if you can borrow one or have access to someone else's lab. Oscilloscopes have relatively low benefit given the cost. They will either be too low frequency to be of value for many modern applications, or too finicky to learn how to use properly for higher frequency applications (not to mention expensive for higher frequency applications).

In my (also limited) experience I was able to get by with just a high-impedance piezo earpiece I could listen to in order to debug audio-frequency circuits. Ears are surprisingly sensitive detectors and can provide quite a bit of data into your brain. Some higher-frequency circuits you can still debug, but not well or at least not as thoroughly. It's not a perfect solution, but dirt cheap, and consumes a tiny amount of space. It's instant feedback and after a while you can start recognizing (guessing at?) different waveforms and types of signal quirks. I've found that a surprisingly useful part of my kit over the years. Just stay away from high voltage!

The poor-man's scope, yes. I still have an AM-radio-sized battery-operated amplifier from Radio Shack in my toolbox, but it's been a long time since I used it.

An AM radio works too, and works above audio frequencies, wirelessly! The loopstick will pick up harmonics off everything in the circuit so you can hear a lot of what's going on. Helps to know what might be going on though.

I had a boss that had retired the following interview question (maybe it was a PhD qual question, I forget): He'd give the candidate a portable TV and an AM radio and have them measure the horizontal scan frequency of the TV. It was probably a chestnut in some circles.

It’s hard to convey how invaluable an oscilloscope is for most electronics labs, at least when you reach the point where you're dealing with your own designs and/or troubleshooting others' flaky designs. Not for use all the time, but for being there if needed. After all, signals in electronics are everywhere, and being able to see a represantation of them takes out so much guesswork from any situation.

You don’t technically need one, but that’ll make a lot of work much harder and some work impossible.

I only recently bought my first oscilloscope (Telequipment analog CRT scope circa 1964), but I've done electronics for years without one. Mostly audio stuff so I've poked an audio probe in the circuit and listen to the signal rather than look at it.

So no, it's by no means essential but it certainly opens some new doors in the hobby. If you want to build kits, say for guitar pedals (pretty popular electronics-related hobby), you can manage without an oscilloscope.

But for designing experimental circuits from scratch, it's really nice to have one.

And it's just fun to play your guitar with the signal plotted on the warm glowing cathode ray tube.

It's the Gear Acquisition Syndrome. (I got the classic Rigol 1054Z ~6 years ago, and it's collecting dust, but I love to be able to use when needed. Nowadays I'd probably go with a portable one from Banggood).

I'd say a scope is to EE what gdb is to coding in C/C++. You can reason instead of observe, but observation can be a huge timesaver, especially if it's not your design.

I bought a cheap usb-powered hand-held oscilloscope DIY kit off Aliexpress. It was a fun soldering project and now I have a (very minimalistic) oscilloscope for when I need one (which is very seldom).

You will use a multimeter a lot more than an oscilloscope.

An oscilloscope is invaluable if something dynamic isn't working correctly. All that LCR stuff becomes real when you can see it. SPI bus and i2c bus issues become possible to visualize - though a protocol analyzer is even nicer, a scope will do.

scopes are like EEs console.log / print / writeline

Ah, this is such a good textbook! I still have my hardcover 2nd ed. left over from my college days and reference it when I'm trying to figure something out for my hobbies. Thanks for the link to the 3rd ed., I didn't know that existed!

I was thinking about this the other day - what’s the situation like now with the active manufacturing of 7400/4000 series parts in (literally) handy DIP packages and the like?

Personally I prefer surface mount over dip on anything other than when I'm using a solderless breadboard as drilling holes(without messing up traces) is a PITA.

But the DIPs are readily available on the *Zon and for fast delivery too!

Of course SMT also requires somewhat of a lab I suppose as a hot air tool is the way to go.

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