A lot has changed in the last 5 years or so especially with USB-C tools. Check out the TS-80P soldering iron (https://www.adafruit.com/product/4244) and a USB-C variable power supply (lots of simple DIY designs, https://hackaday.com/2021/07/18/its-super-easy-to-build-your... ). Those plus a USB logic probe or oscilloscope depending on your needs, and a nice USB programmer/debugger like the Black Magic or a clone of it is a pretty nice and compact setup ( assuming you have a laptop too). You can even power most tools from a good USB-C power bank.
Great news! I have the v1 and it's a really good iron that doesn't look bad at all along my two Wellers. The power and tips thermal mass is more than enough for serious solder joints where some very popular low cost soldering stations, mostly crappy Hakko clones, fail miserably.
My favorite piece of equipment is Bus Pirate device. Has 5V and 3V3; interfaces with UART, SPI, I2C and several sub-standards (MIDI, HD44780 LCDs). Nice textual interface with integrated help. Great community tools like low frequency oscilloscope, logic analyzer, and python library. It's incredible how much they packed into a tiny board.
Thanks for the links! That tiny USB-C power supply is wonderful. I think I'm going to have to build something like this now. Maybe with a case that can be mounted into a portable workstation.
Ricardo - the builder of the linked power supply - also linked this DC6006L [1] by FNIRSI if a non-DIY route is more appealing.
> My oldest kid got a very noisy police toy and rather than just removing the batteries I decided to lower the volume instead.
I know it’s not the point of the post but this kind of thing gets posted by engineers entirely too often. A normal person would unscrew the plastic body and put a piece of tape on the noisemaker to achieve the same effect in two minutes flat. Zero electronics tools or skills needed.
As for the bench, it’s quite nice. As other posters have pointed out you can do a surprising amount in a modern kit with a usb recharged soldering iron, decent multimeter, and a handheld oscilloscope. I personally use stackable clear plastic divider bins I got at target instead of a drawer setup.
Sticking a resistor in line with a too-loud speaker or too-bright LED is about the simplest thing you can do, and won’t mess with the sound quality. It’s not like they’re hacking the firmware or something.
That’s gorgeous. I’m getting into Fpv drones and it requires lots of soldering and associated tools as well as tons of little parts. Right now it’s all over the place. I like how self contained that is. I’m gonna have to think about similar organization.
Edit. Immediately side tracked. Hey, looks like he prototyped the chest in some sort of 3d app. I should probably do the same. The first step is to learn sketch up. Now I’m 3 steps removed from actually flying drones.
That's good for getting started, but you'll probably want to switch into more powerful software before getting too invested in TinkerCad or Sketch-up. Fusion360, for what I use it for(mostly 3d printing), is a good compromise between power and learnability.
Today probably some of the gear could be swapped by a multi channel DAC+ADC+IO interface connected via USB/BLE to a small netbook/tablet, so that one could generate and measure/watch either fixed voltages or more complex signals. It would need some good input protection and possibly ground decoupling on most I/Os though, but should help to shrink the portable lab even further.
Alientek DS-100 ($100 + built-in screen vs. screenless 'Digilent Analog Discovery 2' @ $400 or 'Pokit Pro' @ $270). For a bench, cheaper than Rigol is UNI-T UTD2102CEX ($200 vs $450).
> MCU: GD32F450VET6, Zhaoyi GD32F4 series chip ... Flash: Winbond 25Q128, capacity 128Mbit ... screen: 3.5-inch 480x320 ... ADC: Beijing Times Minxin Technology Co., Ltd. MXT2088 dual eight-bit 100M ADC, pin-compatible with AD9288. MXT2088 is a dual-channel 8-bit data converter. It has an on-chip sample and hold circuit and can work at a conversion rate of 100MSPS. Each channel can work independently.
Pokit Pro can do oscilloscope although only in 10 second bursts. That said I got mine during the kickstarter at $99. Its almost double that now and im not sure its worth that much.
These days you can go a lot smaller, thanks to USB-PD irons, small scopemeters the size of multimeters(Check out Owons new stuff) and the like.
I don't think I'd wanna use lead solder in a van though. You always wind up with tiny dots of it around and even micrograms a day of the stuff is not healthy.
