I am going through the lab/book Learning the Art of Electronics (LAOE) and it has a list of equipment that is necessary for the course and I want to figure out what all I need to still buy.
LAOE List
Oscilloscope
Function Generator
Powered breadboard
Digital Multi meter
Power Supply
Logic probe
Resistor Substitution box
PLD/FPGA programming pod
Some Hand Tools
Wire
What I have
Analog Discovery 3
accomplishes the oscilloscope and function generator
Power Supply
I have a cheap power supply that goes up to 30V
Fluke Multi-meter
I really like it except that it only goes to mA while reading the current.
Many regular breadboards
All the wire and hand tools needed
PIC Kit 4
Although it might be useful later in the course I don’t think that is what they are asking for when talking about a PLD/FPGA programming pod
What I think I still need
Logic Probe
I am not entirely sure what this is for so I am guessing I will need one.
PLD/FPGA programming pod
about the same thing as the logic probe
What I don’t think I need
Powered Breadboard
Not sure why I would need it when I have a power supply
I am thinking of getting one anyways or another power supply just to have the ability to have multiple things going on.
Resistor substitution box
I think this is just a thing that swaps resistors around somehow and I don’t get why it would do any better than just switching by hand or using a variable resistor.
Anybody who disagrees with my assertions of what I think I need and don’t need please comment. Either way please comment with suggestions of what equipment recommended especially for the Logic Prob and PLD/FPGA programming pod.
A logic probe is handy, but for most purposes an oscilloscope will work just fine (especially if it is a storage scope). The nice thing about most logic probes is that they “stretch” really brief pulses so that can see and/or hear them if they were otherwise too short for us to notice.
Multiple power supplies are extremely helpful, since many circuits use more than one power rail.
As for the FPGA stuff: it’s definitely nice to have the ability to program and debug FPGAs, but that’s fairly advanced stuff. You can (and probably should) learn a lot of the fundamentals before diving into FPGAs, and by then you can decide which FPGA ecosystem to invest in.
Finally, you might want to look at the specs for your multimeter. Yours ought to be able to measure up to at least 2A (2000mA), but if you don’t mind sharing the model number or a picture of it we can tell you more.
Sorry I misspoke about my multimeter when I said that it only goes to mA I meant that is as low as it goes. It can read up to 10A. Sometimes I would find it useful to read down to micro-amps or at least have had cases where that would have been useful.
I was briefly reading about logic probes last night and thing that even though my discovery 3 might be able to work I will get one.
For the FPGA stuff that is a ways away as I am following the Learning the Art of Electronics labs and it isn’t till at least February that I will get to those labs.
LAoE is great but you can tell it’s written from the analog point of view – once it got to the digital section (Ch 14) it seemed to loose a proper pedagogical sequence. They spend 4 chapters on op-amps, and 2 chapters on developing the op-amp internals from transistors, but go from logic gates to ALU in 1 chapter.
Contrast this to a real digital design textbook (Harris & Harris Digital Design and Computer Architecture), which takes 5 chapters to go from logic gates to ALUs. Yes you have to master boolean algebra and K-maps, but in the analog section you had to make a differential amplifier with transistors too and no one does that either (LAoE constantly derides K-maps).
Although, I may be biased since I’m midway through the Harris book right now and I couldn’t finish LAoE.
