Electronic Lab Equipment Buying

[mzdenkov]

Greetings!

I need help and some advices from guys with some XP in scopes and multimeters.

soon i will have some money from my scoolership and im interested in buying some
electronics measurement stuff... i will have max 1000€ in my wallet and thinking of
buyung multimeter and oscilloscope..

What is better to chose (i will list my combination).

Oscilloscipe  & Multimeter /  Price (O) & Price (M)

Rigol DS1052E & Fluke 5,5Dgt 8808A / € 239,00 & € 685,00
Rigol DS2072A & Fluke 177 / € 710,00 & € 240,00

and if i had to compare between bench digital 5,5dgt multimeters
Rigol Rigol DM3058E TRMS 5,5-Digit for € 399,00   or
Fluke 5,5Dgt 8808A  for  € 685,00? or
Agilent U3401A for € 381,00

please add your oppinion of  handheld multimeters
and oscilloscopes

For now i only need oscilloscope to see signals from my curcits and for
analysing errors, and i need a good multimeter for the same reason.
Another thing is that im not thinking of buying new stuff until i finsh my
coollage and find a job as an engineer, now im in second year of studying
of electrical engineering.

Thanks to you all. 

[majki]

Hello,

If I were you I would rather select the second option.
A good quality bench multimeter is nice to have but it is not required
for the everyday work and the DS2072A is much better than the DS1052E.
(Not to mention you may need more than one meter anyway.)

Or just in case if you accept also used equipment then go for an used Fluke 187/189 instead of the 177. It is a very good 40000 count TrueRMS meter with higher AC bandwidth and secondary display (And logging in case of 189).

Best regards.

[mzdenkov]

Thanks for your advice. But in your opinion  if i had few  €  more, should i consider of buying Rigol DM3058E ( as bench multimeter ). I saw the specs and its a great multimeter, but i have no XP with Rigol, accept with  DSO1052 scope. Is Rigol a good firm and do they products have a good quality for that money, as Dave from EEV-blog says, thay are good but that is one-mans opinion

[cellularmitosis]

Is there a decent used gear market in your country?  If so, you should consider looking for a good used 5.5 digit meter.  Even if you later decide to buy a newer model, it is never a bad thing to have two precision meters around (e.g. you can track their drift against each other, etc).

Dave has shot a few videos on good used meters (e.g. the HP 3478A), but there are dozens of other models which would work great, and are probably even cheaper.

I started exploring this option myself a little while back, and starting working on a visual compendium of every used bench meter I could find on ebay.  Here's a link to the progress I made so far: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/i7b9iav9d7etva6/8F8RrOTbea?lst

[mzdenkov]

In our country ( Croatia )  there is nothing much what can you buy as used stuff, and if you can for example Oscilloscopes are ultra old and expensive. All this things I have listed i will buy in Austria via firend of my parents. I have searched for used electronics things and I found as i said some ultra old stuff. I thought buying things form ebay, but there is a lot of risk. Here in my country we still have a great economic reason, so im not shure if i will thake that risk.

[edavid]

You don't need to spend so much on a DMM.  A UT61E is good enough.
You could also consider a Rigol DS1074Z.

[wraper]

You don't need to spend so much on a DMM.  A UT61E is good enough.
You could also consider a Rigol DS1074Z.

+1, If you will have only 1000 EUR, it is not so good idea to spare a lot of money for the multimeter unless you have a very good reason. UT61E or something similar would be perfectly acceptable unless you need to make some very precise measurements. I would take DS2072A or DS1074Z then crack it to the highest model, <100 EUR on multimeter. Remaining money goes to the good soldering station, signal generator, electronic load, hot air, preheater, microscope, whatever...

[AG6QR]

I would choose your second option over your first.

For most general electronics work outside of a scientific lab or a calibration facility, something like a Fluke 87V has more than enough precision and accuracy, and it's more convenient than a bench meter, because it is easier to carry around.  Unless you know you have a good reason to need a bench meter, I would start with a good quality handheld DMM.  The Fluke 177 which you mention is good, though not quite as nice as the 87V.

In school we used bench meters, but I think the primary reason was because bench meters are bigger and heavier, so it's less likely that a student would walk out of the lab with one at the end of class.  That same bulk that is a disadvantage for most normal uses is sometimes an advantage at school.

[mzdenkov]

In our collages lab we use bench multimeters ( HAMEG-s ) for all measurements and they are very precise, so that was my reson why to buy bench type of DMM.

[linux-works]

go for much lower priced gear.

you are forgetting something: you plan to BUILD stuff, right?  parts are not cheap and getting boards made, or soldering supplies (not to mention irons and such) are not cheap.

go modest on your test gear since you are just starting out.  go for the older rigol, the 100mhz dual trace version.  you'll get most of what you are looking for but save a lot of money.  you also probably don't need an expensive meter, $100 is more than enough.

put the rest toward a good soldering iron, supplies, and save the rest for when you need to buy parts.

[mzdenkov]

sometimes i forget that.  For now i have a bench power supply(cheep one - Velleman PS1502), Peaktech 3355 DMM, Solomon SL-20 soldering station.And yes i will try to build new stuff and make some good electronic projects. But the crucial thing is that all those things need to work more than 5-6 years.

[linux-works]

once you graduate and get a job, THEN you can blow lots of money on toys   and the state of the art will have progressed a bit by then, as well.

I tend to spend so much on mouser, digikey and local surplus stores, it makes the test gear cost seem like nothing (and I have quite a lot of decent T/M gear).

parts cost is outrageous (for proper parts) so just leave a little left over for a few yrs of mouser-ing

[mzdenkov]

Thanks for advices. I will spend my money cleverly.
Again thanks.

[jeremy]

I would go for the better rigol so that you get protocol decoders/LXI/more sample memory. As for the multimeter, I have lots; the agilent 5.5 digit meters are nice, but if you don't have another good one you definitely want a handheld one. I use my u1241a the most out of all my meters and it was the cheapest! You can even buy a little optoisolated cable for $20 that lets you hook it up to your PC for datalogging.

Handheld ones are especially useful when your parents/siblings/friends/colleagues etc ask you to fix something at their house...

[linux-works]

for proto decode, I would use one of the 8/16/32 line '$50' versions that are usb based and send data to a pc.

you really don't need to waste a scope to do spi, i2c, rs232 (etc) capture and decode anymore.  its nice if you are trying to track down voltage levels or shapes of signals, but for simple logic capture, the cheap usb boards are actually better (more flexible and more lines).

[mzdenkov]

For now i think i will forget about DMM. I think i will take a DSO2000 series Rigol, crack it and wait for more money to come.

[RiverTown]

I would go for Rigol DS2072A and Brymen BM869. It is not Fluke but you get much more features for the price.
You can buy bench multimeter and/or high quality Fluke later on.
Greetings from Rijeka.
P.S. On which college do you go?

[mzdenkov]

Im on  " Fakulteta za Elektrotehniko Racunalništvo in Informatiko - Maribor "

[G0HZU]

My advice is always to only buy what you need.

Unless you have a need for the features offered by a new Rigol scope or have a need for a 5.5digit DMM then I wouldn't buy either of them if I were you.

Do you have to produce a project for your EE course? Maybe the time to decide what test gear to buy is the time you decide what your project is going to be. Because that is the time you will know what test gear you 'need' to support your project.

[BravoV]

My advice is always to only buy what you need.

 

[Rory]

For now i think i will forget about DMM. I think i will take a DSO2000 series Rigol, crack it and wait for more money to come.

Shouldn't just wait for it to come. Go out and get it while you can!

[mzdenkov]

So let the time decide, now i need only the scope.. But a good DMM will always be hadny for testing.  Im a guy full of enthusiasm for Electronics and sometimes i make quick and wrong decisions. I have decided to buy Rigol 2000series scope, and wait for a year or so to buy  Fluke 87V + the cheapest Rigol signal generator.

Thanks to you all!