Advice regarding setting up my mini electronics lab - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / beginners

author: samdare
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: March 30, 2018, 02:42:37 pm
content: hi there, am an electronics and communication engineering student . i wanna set up a mini electronics lab aimed to work with arduino,rasberrypi,embedded systems ,basic electronics.What are the basic,project independent things should be there with ranges of values, like of course i should have resistors ,capacitors and inductors ,power supply,multimeter etc but what should be the values also about some basic transistors, diodes,555timer etc to have handy for prototyping with there component number.I just want board idea from experienced guys regarding things to add in my shopping list.

author: Chris-IP5
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: March 30, 2018, 04:07:38 pm
content: When I started it was long before Arduino and PICs were everywhere.Electronic equipment can be expensive. I had very little money spare so I bought very basic equipment. For a long time I got by with just a digital multimeter, variable power supply and breadboard.You can get starter kits of the basic components - containing resistors capacitors diodes 555 etc. I got an LED and mono audio amp IC too, and wire to do the breadboarding.Does the syllabus of your engineering course give you any ideas of what you might find useful?

author: Eka
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: March 30, 2018, 11:01:21 pm
content: Quote from: Chris-IP5 on March 30, 2018, 04:07:38 pmThe Motorola 6800 was released soon after I first melted solder.Quote from: Chris-IP5 on March 30, 2018, 04:07:38 pmIt's cheaper now than when I started... Yes, you can make due with little equipment. I'd have to say I spent 98+% of my electronics purchases on parts for non test equipment projects. Even then, most of my test equipment budget has been parts to make what I needed. Almost everything that I have that is fancy was bought surplus or dumpster dived, and repaired by me. My first variable power supply was a variable voltage linear regulator hooked up to a string of batteries. I swapped resistors to change the voltage. Now I'd just buy a few different voltage output brick type power supplies for the common voltages. Often they can be found surplus for cheap. I still don't own a proper bench power supply. My current "bench" power supply is a PC power supply which I've setup with some banana plugs for hooking up to it. To get the needed minimum load on the 12VDC rail I have a couple light panels, and my soldering smoke filter fans powered by it. Most of what I do is digital so it has most of the voltages I want. It's only missing 24 and 48 VDC.Quote from: Chris-IP5 on March 30, 2018, 04:07:38 pmSecond this. The most recent parts kits I've purchased are from DigiKey. The advantage with the name brand ones are you know the parts used in it, and can get more of the exact same part easily. Unless your kit is so old the line was discontinued. I recently binned some capacitors that dried out waiting to be used. They were extras bought in the '70s. If you don't have the money, then ebay kits can do.Stuff to get:quality multicore solder like Multicore. Dave goes over this in his soldering videos. The cheap single core stuff sucks. I have thin, medium and fat sizes.quality solder wick of a few sizes.hand solder vacuum. Should only be $5 or so.solid core hookup wire kit with at least 6 colors for breadboard and soldered circuit use. White jacketed wire and a range of permanent markers or colored heat shrink tubing to mark the ends also works. Optionally a stranded wire kit for soldered use. All the stranded wire I have is leftovers from what I bought for specific projects. For some sizes of wires I use white wire with markers and colored heat shrink tubing to mark the ends.A spool of wire wrap wire for patching to pins on PCBs.a few solderless breadboards. The most I've used on a project at one time is 5, but I wanted more.a few each of a basic range of logic chips, and, or, nor, nand, buffer, inverting buffer, schmidt trigger, flip-flop, etc.Decoupling capacitors for the logic chips. 0.01uF, 0.1uF, 1.0uF, and 10uF are good sizes to have on hand.logic level converters. note, no one type universally works everywhere.Others can advise on analog chips to get.On resistors, 100 each of the common resistor values, 5 each of uncommon ones. I just bought the cheaper 5 each for most values kit from DigiKey. For the values you use, add on a 100 or so on your next parts order. In 25 years I haven't used over half of them. Ones like 240 and 10k Ohms I've restocked a few times.on capacitors, I, I'll leave that to others. I just have extras from projects except for one kit which remains largely untouched. Most capacitors I use are for decoupling noise on the power rails. If a chip needs something special, it will likely tell you in it's specifications sheet, and I order them when I order the chip.My heatshrink tubing kit has been handy, but it is a later item. The smallest and largest sizes in most kits have little use. Buying the middle third and a quarter of the number of pieces of larger sizes likely would be a better deal in the long run. My kit is over 25 years old and I still have many small diameter pieces that are still a full 4' long.Generic .1" spaced break apart header strips. Just get them from ebay. Look for places selling 10+ 40 to 100 circuit long ones in a group. Get a few right angle header strips. They have their uses.A few different types of LEDs, and a 100 each of the resistor values needed for them to be powered from 3.3, 5, and 12VDC.general N and P channel FETs and transistors. They can up the power controlled by an output pin. I remember the days when you needed one to drive an LED from a MCU.It can be handy to have a few optical isolators for real world interfacing. They can keep you from blowing up your controller board. I almost always use optical isolators when interfacing to mains attached circuits. I also use them when interfacing to high power/high voltage inductive DC circuits like motors and coils. The ground bounce from a large coil turning on and off can disrupt logic circuits many feet away if they have linked ground planes.Low cost electronics lab equipment video by our host.

author: Jwillis
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 31, 2018, 05:03:29 am
content: If your looking for transistors ,there are assorted kits available from EBay, Amazon and Bangood with the most commonly used.The kits are relatively inexpensive and come in TO-92 or SMD .Other kits include resistors ,capacitors ,diodes ,regulators ,74HCxx series CMOS and 4000 series CMOS.