Ardiuno Starter kits as a starting point

[RissViss]

Dave is always talking about having two meters.
How would this work as a setup
https://www.amazon.ca/UNI-T-Resistance-Auto-ranging-Multimeters-Capacitance/dp/B0166E3ATG/ref=sr_1_26?s=hi&ie=UTF8&qid=1486798853&sr=1-26&keywords=uni-t+multimeter

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Digitek-DT-4000ZC-TekPower-TP4000ZC-Data-Logging-Multimeter-with-Temperature/200912705694?_trksid=p2047675.c100623.m-1&_trkparms=aid%3D222007%26algo%3DSIC.MBE%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D41375%26meid%3D7ec4a8f1cce94719bcdb4cea512ba549%26pid%3D100623%26rk%3D2%26rkt%3D6%26sd%3D200922627340

save some cash and still have two different meters.

[NottheDan]

If it helps, here's a review of the Digitec: http://www.mjlorton.com/tekpower-tp4000zc-digitek-dt-4000zc-multimeter-with-data-logging-review-and-buyers-guide/
He's quite enthusiastic about it.

[forrestc]

https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B01M9CHF1J?psc=1
This starter kit looks like it has a lot of things to do/ different projects. Do not know for sure people who have the kit will know better. Cost to ship to Canada with duty and other Canadian taxes.
If there are Canadians who know or can suggest better kits would be great.

Honestly, that kit looks awesome.  Makes me wish I had more time to play with this type of stuff.   It *might* be cheaper to go get everything on ebay, but the real advantage of this kit is that it has a lot of stuff in it so you can experiment.  Plus... one thing you may have missed is that this kit has a learning manual, so you probably don't need a book for right now.   Once you get a basic understanding, you'll find the internet is often a far better resource than any book.   

In relation to the DMM and/or other stuff you think you might need:  I'd just get the kit, play with it, and wait on everything else.   One thing about starting with an arduino is that it generally hides the electronics itself from you.  A DMM can be helpful, but for most of the projects you probably aren't going to miss not having one, at least initially.

[brucehoult]

https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B01M9CHF1J?psc=1
This starter kit looks like it has a lot of things to do/ different projects. Do not know for sure people who have the kit will know better. Cost to ship to Canada with duty and other Canadian taxes.
If there are Canadians who know or can suggest better kits would be great.

Honestly, that kit looks awesome.  Makes me wish I had more time to play with this type of stuff.   It *might* be cheaper to go get everything on ebay, but the real advantage of this kit is that it has a lot of stuff in it so you can experiment.  Plus... one thing you may have missed is that this kit has a learning manual, so you probably don't need a book for right now.   Once you get a basic understanding, you'll find the internet is often a far better resource than any book.   

In relation to the DMM and/or other stuff you think you might need:  I'd just get the kit, play with it, and wait on everything else.   One thing about starting with an arduino is that it generally hides the electronics itself from you.  A DMM can be helpful, but for most of the projects you probably aren't going to miss not having one, at least initially.

I disagree with that. You need *some* kind of DMM. But I think the cheapest one you can find that has continuity test (preferably with a buzzer) is very useful. Just the other day I bought a $2 pack of five leads with alligator clips. I used a couple of them to hook my breadboard to a 3.5mm jack. I was puzzled why it wasn't working very well until I found that one of the leads didn't actually have continuity between the clips!

Being able to verify resistances and voltages and (to a lesser extent) currents is super useful. You don't need huge accuracy. A lot of the time 10% or 20% would probably be fine, but in fact even an aliexpress $10 DMM does far better than that. There's absolutely no reason not to have one.

I'm using an MAS830, which can be found on eBay, aliexpress etc as low as $10.

[daybyter]

Aliexpress has discounts most of the time. Bought me one of those 830b DMMs with continuity buzzer for Euro 2,74 including shipping. Works just fine after cleaning the tips of the probes. Already found a shortcut in a sd2iec with it. Should be ok for measuring on breadboards.

[RissViss]

I have watched that video a few time it is the reason I am looking at it. Looks like a solid meter to learn from.
Even if I get two and this hobby is not for me, I will have one meter and a friend that uses a meter for testing small things could use the other.
Have a day

[RissViss]

Thanks for the input.
The problem I would have with a cheap meter and accuracy would be that in my job that I use to do accuracy was a key thing when you measure steal parts with accuracy of + / - .001, so my starting meter would have to be lets say + / - .01 or .1 these are in inches. Even in metric + / - .01 mm.
Getting a inexpensive meter for me, where I would always be wondering how far off is this measurement is would drive me a little crazy.
Have a day

[rstofer]

Thanks for the input.
The problem I would have with a cheap meter and accuracy would be that in my job that I use to do accuracy was a key thing when you measure steal parts with accuracy of + / - .001, so my starting meter would have to be lets say + / - .01 or .1 these are in inches. Even in metric + / - .01 mm.
Getting a inexpensive meter for me, where I would always be wondering how far off is this measurement is would drive me a little crazy.
Have a day

Meter accuracy is often difficult to compare.  Let's assume that the specs are correct...  First you have the % of reading error, and then there is the digits error.  On some meters, the % of reading seems very good until you find out that 10 digits (an entire decade) of the reading is nonsense.

Take your cheap meter specs and compare to a high end Fluke or even the EEVblog Brymen meter.  Make up a little spreadsheet.  Look at DC Volts, DC uA or mA, AC V, Ohms (all ranges) in about that order.

Real accuracy, just like in hand tools, tends to cost money.  None of the $50 meters will come anywhere near the accuracy of a high end Fluke.

[daybyter]

I checked the 830 against my voltage reference (like the rest of my meters) and I was surprised how well it performed.

But the point is, that you can do a lot even with a quite inaccurate meter. If you want to know, if your arduino has power supply, any voltage between 4.x and 5.x V means, that it has power. And even any 3$ meter will give you such info. So the 3$ meter is much better than no meter at all.

I wouldn't buy 2 good meters now if you are that short on money. A good meter and a disposable meter should be ok. A cheap logic analyzer or cheap scope give you much more measuring options than 2 good meters.

[forrestc]

I disagree with that. You need *some* kind of DMM. But I think the cheapest one you can find that has continuity test (preferably with a buzzer) is very useful. Just the other day I bought a $2 pack of five leads with alligator clips. I used a couple of them to hook my breadboard to a 3.5mm jack. I was puzzled why it wasn't working very well until I found that one of the leads didn't actually have continuity between the clips!

Let me try to clarify what I was saying:

With the arduino kit he was looking at, his first few projects are going to consist of installing the arduino IDE, Hooking the arduino up with a usb cable, blinking a led, learning about I/O.  And so on.   I know quite a few people who do arduino projects and they seem to rarely if ever use a DMM. 

For a large part, he's going to be dealing with *computer programming* and basic hookup type stuff and not much actual electronic design at least initially.   He's going to know pretty quickly if this agrees with him.   And before he needs to buy a DMM.   

My recommendation was this:  Buy the arduino starter kit.  Work through the first few exercises.  And then the *second* purchase should be a DMM.  And fairly quickly if this agrees with him.  But he shouldn't need a DMM to get started and at least get a feel for whether or not this is interesting to him.

When he finally needs a DMM, chances are the cheapest crap DMM he could buy would be good for quite a while - "Is there continuity here", "Is the voltage near 5V", "is this a 10K resistor".   Your recommendation of a cheap $10 DMM off of alibaba is not unreasonable.   Or, he could invest a bit in the future and buy something nicer and more accurate. 

One other DMM note which one might consider is that there is something to be said for just having a general purpose DMM around the house to check plug voltages, etc..  In which case any DMM recommendation I would make would likely focus on safety when measuring the mains and not something cheap to be used only for low voltage electronics.   Any reasonable "electrician" meter should be sufficient for starting out electronics.

[rstofer]

http://store.digilentinc.com/analog-discovery-2-100msps-usb-oscilloscope-logic-analyzer-and-variable-power-supply/

The Analog Discovery is amazing.  If that was all the test equipment I could have, I could get a lot of electronics working.

A dual channel scope, a dual channel arbitrary waveform generator, a network analyzer, a dual power supply,, two DMMs that take over the scope inputs, 16 bits of digital IO including, the capability of using them for a logic analyzer, and a host of other things including serial stream decoding (I2C, SPI, UART)

It might be worth downloading the software and playing with the virtual demo device.

Realistically, it's probably the best $279 I have spent on this hobby.

[RissViss]

Thanks this was the kind of info, I was looking for.

This is what I will be ordering then.
https://www.amazon.ca/Elegoo-Project-Complete-Starter-Tutorial/dp/B01M9CHF1J/ref=pd_cp_147_2?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=58BV8NE84S1FYPVCHCK3
This will be my starter kit for ardiuno.

And if I like this hobby then I will have more money to put into tools.
This is a little over $80 CAD and if I like it my all in would be another $320 CAD, better then spending the $200 and finding out it is not for me, I have a habit of spending more then I should just to find out I got the wrong thing or I did not like what I was doing.
Then I can see what else I will need.

Thanks everyone for all the info and help.

I disagree with that. You need *some* kind of DMM. But I think the cheapest one you can find that has continuity test (preferably with a buzzer) is very useful. Just the other day I bought a $2 pack of five leads with alligator clips. I used a couple of them to hook my breadboard to a 3.5mm jack. I was puzzled why it wasn't working very well until I found that one of the leads didn't actually have continuity between the clips!

Let me try to clarify what I was saying:

With the arduino kit he was looking at, his first few projects are going to consist of installing the arduino IDE, Hooking the arduino up with a usb cable, blinking a led, learning about I/O.  And so on.   I know quite a few people who do arduino projects and they seem to rarely if ever use a DMM. 

For a large part, he's going to be dealing with *computer programming* and basic hookup type stuff and not much actual electronic design at least initially.   He's going to know pretty quickly if this agrees with him.   And before he needs to buy a DMM.   

My recommendation was this:  Buy the arduino starter kit.  Work through the first few exercises.  And then the *second* purchase should be a DMM.  And fairly quickly if this agrees with him.  But he shouldn't need a DMM to get started and at least get a feel for whether or not this is interesting to him.

When he finally needs a DMM, chances are the cheapest crap DMM he could buy would be good for quite a while - "Is there continuity here", "Is the voltage near 5V", "is this a 10K resistor".   Your recommendation of a cheap $10 DMM off of alibaba is not unreasonable.   Or, he could invest a bit in the future and buy something nicer and more accurate. 

One other DMM note which one might consider is that there is something to be said for just having a general purpose DMM around the house to check plug voltages, etc..  In which case any DMM recommendation I would make would likely focus on safety when measuring the mains and not something cheap to be used only for low voltage electronics.   Any reasonable "electrician" meter should be sufficient for starting out electronics.

 

[rstofer]

With the arduino kit he was looking at, his first few projects are going to consist of installing the arduino IDE, Hooking the arduino up with a usb cable, blinking a led, learning about I/O.  And so on.   I know quite a few people who do arduino projects and they seem to rarely if ever use a DMM. 

For a large part, he's going to be dealing with *computer programming* and basic hookup type stuff and not much actual electronic design at least initially.   He's going to know pretty quickly if this agrees with him.   And before he needs to buy a DMM.   

Absolutely correct.  I would imagine that the project instructions include some way to identify the proper resistors but, at my age and with my defective color vision, I use a meter on every resistor or capacitor I install.  I'm torn between "don't need a meter at all" or "buy the cheapest thing around", or maybe "one step up".  I have a Fluke 189 and it is supremely accurate against my calibrator.  The Brymen is pretty good and the others, not so much.  But, realistically, +- 2% is fine but I would hope for better than that.

There's something to be said for "buy stuff when you need it!".