Hey all,
I'm a student, and I have (very) limited access to money (people, be kind and donate to the Help-Rohit-Fund. Donations for this noble cause will not be taxed...I promise Anyway, since most of you are students as well, and are in a similar state of monetary paucity, I've made up a list of tools/components that you must have. In fact, I carry the stuff mentioned below everywhere I go....if my trip to a place is more than 4 days long, this stuff goes with me. The list is by no means comprehensive, or complete - its simply what I find most useful. If I dont have something, I do a bit of jugaad.
1. Simple multimeter - MAS830, Rs325 (no fancy stuff, no capacitance meter, or inductance measurement,etc, etc - this add heavily to the cost)
2. 25W soldering iron - Soldron, Rs120 (dont compromise on this .you do get cheaper imitations for 35-80 bucks, but its not worth it.it doesnt heat up fast, tips are useless, coil burns out super quick; buy a pointed tip with the soldering iron; you'll find it useful after you get the hang of soldering)
3. 60/40 SnPb pre fluxed solder wire, Rs30 - I usually have the standard 0.05" dia wire, as well as the fine SMD solder wire
4. Wire stripper/cutter, crimper (Rs20)
5. Smooth file (Rs 10)
6. Wire - I carry around single strand hookup wire (Rs3 per m) for use on solderless bread boards, and multistrand ribbon cable( Rs6 per m) for prototyping
7. Breadboards - two solderless (Rs, 60 each), and two DM2030 (Rs 7.50 each) (this is the VIsha Electronics part number, they're just veroboards)
8. My Microchip PICKit2 USB programmer - Rs.2000, - this is one of my most useful tools. It programs the entire PIC range of controllers (10,12,14,16,18,24,30,33,PIC32 - thats over 500 controllers), plus loads of memory EEPROMS, it can acts as a Logic output, a Logic analyser, a USB to Uart converter (no need of the MAX232), a 2.5 to 5 V power supply, etc etc
9. Some LEDs (Re1 each) and push buttons (Rs2 each)
10. A homemade 3Amp, 1.2 to 21V variable power supply (Rs150)
11. A 16x2 character LCD based terminal UART that I whipped together for Rs130.this way I dont need access to a PC for RS232 based debugging
12. A few resistors, capacitors, molex headers, pots (potentiometers) - not more than Rs30
13. Chips, circuits that I'm currently working on
The total cost of the above stuff is around Rs3000, out of which the PICKit2 is 2 grand. I find most of this stuff indispensable; you may have a slightly different kit-out depending on what electronic stuff you work on.
Coming up next.my wish-list.(this is where the Help-Rohit-Fund comes in ) haha
Tech blog, where I dump a few of my experiments with electronics, current projects and thoughts on things.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Hey
So this is my first attempt at blogging, but it definitely is not the first time I'm posting online. I do most of my 'blogging' on technical forums, Microchip and CCS are the most common. I also post to my University's forum. I'm gonna simply do a copy-paste of my post on the BITS forum. This blog will be a largely BITS-centric blog (naturally, since I'm a devout BITSian!).
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