Tools!
Getting started in hobby electronics is a lot easier today than it was 30 years ago. Back then, you were lucky if you had a decent electronics shop within an hour's drive, and even then, the on-hand stock of parts and tools was likely a mere sprinkling of what was really out there. If you weren't already in the business, or fortunate enough to live near a tech-heavy area like Boston or Silicon Valley you had to depend on magazine ads and scant occasional word of mouth to have any idea what lay beyond one's own confining horizon.
Today, we're spoiled for choice. The Open Source movement has breathed new life into "technology as a hobby". The Internet has brought both the world of commerce, and of information right to your desk. Advances in semiconductor manufacturing, miniaturization, and yields have brought about unprecedented declines in cost-per-transistor and increases in transistors-per-square-millimeter. Economies of scale have made what, back in the day, we would have called "electronics surplus" an industry unto itself.
Here are some of the tools I use while working on the RIBBBIT65 (none of these are affiliate or sponsored links):
- BENCHTOP:
- Digital Multimeter: EEVBlog Brymen BM235
- Oscilloscope: Rigol DS1054Z 4-channel oscilloscope, which I got from Adafruit
- Soldering Station: YIHUA 853D which has worked pretty well for me for about a year. It does pencil and hot-air, and has a simple bench power supply built in. At less than $150, I'm not expecting it to last forever, but it's held up well so far.
- Desoldering Tool: HAKKO FR301-03/P vacuum desoldering gun
- Magnifying Lamp: Almost anything will do, but I settled on this one and it's been great.
- Vise: I have the PANAVISE 324 with QuadHands Flex Plus Workbench. To be honest, I don't use the Panavise as much as I'd anticipated, but when I need it it's nice to have. I've used the QuadHands even less, but, again... when I needed it, I was glad I had it.
- EEPROM Programmer: TL866II Plus
- SOFTWARE:
- Operating System: GNU/Linux. All day. Most of my desktop/laptop machines run Ubuntu MATE. My x86 servers run Debian or Ubuntu Server. Raspberry Pis run Raspberry Pi OS.
- Electronic Design Aid: KiCAD
- Integrated Development Environment: Geany. It's simple, cross-platform, Open Source, and language agnostic.
- Compiler: For 6502 Assembly, I use vasm
- EEPROM programming: MiniPRO
- PARTS SOURCING:
- SERVICES:
- PCB Fabrication: I've seen a lot of online advertising for PCBWay, and there's very much a part of me that wants to support OSH Park, I have been using JLCPCB for about a year and a half, and have had very good results with good turn times and good prices.
- HAND TOOLS:
- Small diagonal cutters and needle-nose pliers
- A good, sharp utility knife
- Anti-static mat with grounding strap
- DIP IC pin straightener
- A set of small picks and spring hooks
- A good set of small "precision" screw drivers -- something like this
- IC extractors - for fat DIPs and skinny DIPs... and PLCCs, while you're at it.
- Locking foreceps/haemostats
- Precision tweezers
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