Recommended accessories for first DSO

[gdombi]

Hi everyone,

First time posting to this forum. I recently started this new electronics hobby and it has smitten me badly. Been building things on RPi, Arduino, ESP8266 and ESP32 boards. As long as things worked fine, it was ... easy. However, as I started to add SPI, i2c and Serial interfaces it was becoming harder to troubleshoot when things were not working as expected. Was it the hardware? Was it the software? Both? You get it.

So this is how I ended up learning about LAs and oscilloscopes. I narrowed down which ones to get based on the awesome information and lots of opinions I found on this forum. I will soon purchase a Rigol DS1054Z. Seems to hit the sweet spot of cost + feature + "needs" = budget. Now the question:

What other accessories should I get for the Rigol DS1054Z? It comes with 4 150 MHz Passive Probes (PVP2150). I'm planning on getting a case to store it when not in use (and for potential moves). Is there anything else that I should consider for my first digital oscilloscope?

Thanks for your guidance,
Gaston

[llkiwi2006]

You might want to get a logic analyzer, since the decoding in the ds1054z isn't great. As far as I can tell, it only decodes what's on screen, and doesn't work properly if I'm zoomed too far out.

You might also want some micro-grabbers (preferably higher quality ones) if you want to probe multiple ic pins at once. If you get a logic analyzer, they usually come with micro-grabbers.

[gdombi]

Great feedback. Yep, I added a Logic Analyzer and a JTAG debugger also to my hobby-toolkit. I will look into micro-grabbers since I had no idea they existed. Read about them and it makes sense in case I need to troubleshoot small things - SMDs.

Would something like this work: https://www.tequipment.net/Pomona/72905-0/?v=0 (Pomona 72905-0) ? Or this https://www.adafruit.com/product/2618? Not sure what is different between them.

Thanks,
Gaston

[tautech]

These are what most of get and if you can break up a bag with some mates they're not too pricey.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Lot-20-Tektronix-TEK-SMT-KlipChip-Adapter-Mini-Test-Clips-Grabbers-206-0364-01/261474295590?epid=1300248025&hash=item3ce1151f26:g:lPAAAOSw-ldZamqJ

Sometimes there's small lots on the 'bay.

They work OK down to SOIC but not smaller.