Redoing a lab -- 15K to spend.

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brehob
 
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Joined: Thu Oct 06, 2011 11:20 am

Redoing a lab -- 15K to spend.

Post by brehob »

Hello all,
We recently received some corporate funding (thanks State Farm!) to redo a student project lab at the University of Michigan--and in particular the embedded systems portion of that lab (http://www.eecs.umich.edu/hub/index.html). We have a fair number of people with a fair bit of experience doing embedded systems work, but I thought I'd reach out to the larger community and get suggestions on exactly what we should buy.

We currently have plenty of power supplies and (old) O-scopes [HP 56645A] along with (old) logic analyzers (we're talking 15-20 years old when I say old). We've got Weller WESD51 soldering stations, a cheap hot air system (really cheap), and a nice (but small) hot pad. We've also got a reasonably good collection of thru-hole resistors and caps.

We are looking at spending on the order of $15K on new stuff. We want to build one very nice station, one "okay" backup station and one station that is extremely basic (and has a small footprint--that station will be shared with pure software stuff and needs to not take up much space and be easily moved). The backup station will be mostly our old stuff. So I've more-or-less got up to 15K to spend on new stuff. This includes getting all the "standard" components one might wish to use.

What we are thinking of getting is at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... sp=sharing. The Amazon wishlist referenced is at http://amzn.com/w/AJDBT4T5KN1H.

In addition to looking for any suggestions about what we should buy, I've got one specific question: Is the Hacko IR Preheater FR870 (or something like it) actually useful? It seems like it would be, but we don't have anyone who has used anything like it (let alone that specific piece of equipment) and that's a lot of money to spend without having some sense it's a good buy.

Any feedback is welcome. Our 15K budget isn't tight--if we go under it I've plenty of useful things to do, and if 20K turns out to be a clearly better point, I can swing that.

Mark

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adafruit_support_mike
 
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Re: Redoing a lab -- 15K to spend.

Post by adafruit_support_mike »

In that price range, I'd say focus on test and measurement gear.

I see you have a microscope on the list, which is a good idea.

I'd suggest at least one four-channel oscilloscope, ideally a mixed-signal one. There are times when you need to compare the logical values of a signal to the actual waveforms, and having a couple of extra channels is handy.

A two-channel arbitrary waveform generator is darned useful, both as a signal source for a circuit under test, and as a calibration reference for anything involving a clock. Oscilloscopes do a decent job of estimating frequency from a screen's worth of samples, but if you plug a signal generator into one channel and use that as your trigger source, you can measure frequencies down to the generator's resolution limit.. usually around a millihertz these days.

Get a bench multimeter (I have my eye on a Keithley 2100), a couple of really good handheld multimeters (Fluke 87), a few good ones (the B&K 2712 gives value for money the $100-125 range), enough $50 ones that you can always find one nearby, and keep a box of $8 hardware-store units. Each tier has its uses, and while the expensive ones can do anything the cheap ones can, the opposite is absolutely not true. When you need the Keithley, nothing less will do. Also check Collin's video on multimeters: https://learn.adafruit.com/collins-lab-multimeters. It shows a couple of neat ones we have in the shop.

Get as many well-calibrated adjustable power supplies as your conscience will permit. In practice, the number of well-defined voltages you want will always be "however many I have" plus two. Adjustable current limiting is a must for smoke tests.

And since I wouldn't be doing my job if I couldn't think of something Adafruit has to offer, get a few pounds of Trinkets. They're ridiculously useful as glue hardware, quick and dirty signal generators, test sequencers, etc.

brehob
 
Posts: 9
Joined: Thu Oct 06, 2011 11:20 am

Re: Redoing a lab -- 15K to spend.

Post by brehob »

Thanks so much. This is the Keithley you are thinking of: http://www.amazon.com/Keithley-2100-100 ... thley+2100, correct?

We've got a range of hand-held meters already. And I know what scope I want (well I've narrowed it down--I want to use something close to what the students have in their classroom labs). We have old-but-great-for-the-time function generators. I think only one-channel though. They've seen minimal use thus far in this lab (though I use them all the time in the classroom labs, but still only one channel).

Any specific trinkets you'd suggest for a hackerspace/projectspace like ours? Nothing jumped out at me.

Thanks again!
Mark

brehob
 
Posts: 9
Joined: Thu Oct 06, 2011 11:20 am

Re: Redoing a lab -- 15K to spend.

Post by brehob »

Thanks so much. This is the Keithley you are thinking of: http://www.amazon.com/Keithley-2100-100 ... thley+2100, correct?

We've got a range of hand-held meters already. And I know what scope I want (well I've narrowed it down--I want to use something close to what the students have in their classroom labs). We have old-but-great-for-the-time function generators. I think only one-channel though. They've seen minimal use thus far in this lab (though I use them all the time in the classroom labs, but still only one channel).

Any specific trinkets you'd suggest for a hackerspace/projectspace like ours? Nothing jumped out at me.

Thanks again!
Mark

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adafruit_support_mike
 
Posts: 67446
Joined: Thu Feb 11, 2010 2:51 pm

Re: Redoing a lab -- 15K to spend.

Post by adafruit_support_mike »

brehob wrote:Thanks so much. This is the Keithley you are thinking of: http://www.amazon.com/Keithley-2100-100 ... thley+2100, correct?
Yep. I usually buy equipment through Mouser or Digikey, but the model number matches.
brehob wrote:We have old-but-great-for-the-time function generators. I think only one-channel though. They've seen minimal use thus far in this lab (though I use them all the time in the classroom labs, but still only one channel).
A two-channel unit really pays off when you're working with filters, or anything that has a frequency response. Set one channel as a 1Hz sawtooth, the other as a sweep across the range of frequencies you want, and plug them into a scope set of XY mode. You get a real-time Bode plot.

brehob wrote:Any specific trinkets you'd suggest for a hackerspace/projectspace like ours? Nothing jumped out at me.
Whoops.. Trinket with a capital 'T': https://www.adafruit.com/products/1509

It's an ATtiny85 microcontroller already wired with a voltage regulator, reset button, a couple of LEDs, and pre-flashed with a bootloader that emulates a USB connection for ease of programming. They're perfect for all those scaffolding jobs that keep a circuit under development running until it's capable of standing on its own.

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