Building Your Own Electronics Lab: A Guide to Setting Up Your Own Gadget Workshop
What should an electronics hackerspace look like? Is it in your bedroom, garage, a classroom, or even a suitcase?
And where do you start? What parts are essential, and which are just nice to have? And how do you organize it all?
Dale Wheat, the author of Arduino Internals, will show you how to build your own electronics lab complete with tools, parts, and power sources. You’ll learn how to create a portable lab, a small lab to save space, and even a lab for small groups and classrooms.
You’ll learn which parts and tools are indispensable no matter what type projects you’re working on: which soldering irons are best, which tools, cables, and testing equipment you’ll need. You’ll also learn about different chips, boards, sensors, power sources, and which ones you’ll want to keep on hand.
Finally, you’ll learn how to assemble everything for the type of lab best suited to your needs. If you need to carry everything to your local makerspace, you can build the Portable Lab. If you plan to tinker at home or in the garage, there is the Corner Lab. If you’re going to run your own local makerspace or you need to set up a lab to teach others, there is the Small-Group Lab.
No matter what your gadgeteering needs may be, Building Your Own Electronics Lab will show you exactly how to put it all together so you have what you need to get started.
What you’ll learn
- Essential components of every electronics lab, and how to get them without going broke
- The differences between types of electronics parts, accessories, and tools you may need
- Designing a lab for portability
- Designing a lab to save space
- Designing a lab to share space and resources
Who this book is for
Electronics hobbyists, Arduino enthusiasts, hardware hackers, ham radio tinkerers, or anyone wanting to build their own makerspace.
Table of Contents
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Planning Your Electronics Workshop
Building Your Tool Chest
Parts – Both Spare and Not-so-Spare
Portable Mini-Lab
The Corner Lab
The Small-Group Lab
Appendix: Getting Started with Tool-Building
Product Features
- Used Book in Good Condition
A Practical Guide for Compact Electronics Labs for the Hobbyist This compact guide is oriented toward the newer electronics hobbyist who is looking for a cost and space efficient means of accomplishing much with as little as possible in a portable, home or “Hackerspace” working area for electronics experimentation. This is an economical minimalist approach not encouraging you the experimenter to immediately splurge for a high end oscilloscope, signal processing equipment, or logic analyzer. Rather this short handbook will tell you how the most can be accomplished with a multimeter, a small set of hand tools, alligator clips, and a solderless breadboard. Safety, space efficiency, and order are not neglected in this compact volume. For the newbie hobbyist the appearance and function of the major electronic components, and a basic introduction to Ohm’s law and Serial and Parallel Circuits are clearly explained.I find this excellent but succinct guide to be extremely valuable to the newer electronics hobbyist, or someone trying to obtain the maximum function in an electronics lab at minimal cost and within a very limited space, orcarry-all briefcase.Ira Laefsky, MSEngineering/MBA Information Systems Consultant and participant in the Philadelphia area Hackerspace Hive76
Very, VERY simple. This book is way on the simplistic/dumbed-down end of the spectrum. I bought it hoping to get some good ideas and plans for bench top equipment like power supplies, multimeters, logic probes, etc. instead it is your run of the mill intro to electronic components, ohm’s law and some organizational tips. If that’s what you’re looking for and you want to keep it very simple, then this book is fine, but it is NOT what the title implied to me.
Nicely written….but lousy content. When I read this book description, I was convinced that this book was ideal for me. Since I was starting with Arduino, I hoped to learn something about arduino and how to set up my “electronics corner”.To be honest: I was extremely disappointed by the content of this book. The only time Arduino was mentioned, was a caption under a picture ! And building your own tools explains that you can build your own 5V lab power supply by….cutting off the mini USB jack of a USBcharger. You also learn that you cut wires with a wire-cutting tool, etc.I will admit that, allthough the content was way to meager to be interesting, I read the book from cover to cover. Why? Because the author has a very humorous way of writing (f.e. “allways wear protection, there are no spare parts laying around for things like your eyes, your ears, ….”).If you want a very basic lecture on electricity/electronics and you are a (allmost complete) novice in the field, then maybe you get something out of the book, but else…..Did I enjoyed reading the book; definitly yes !! Did I had fun reading the book: Yes ! Did I learned something….unfortunatly not.