Newbie says hello, and new bench build

[tcbetka]

Hello all...

I've been lurking a while now, and watching as many of Dave's YouTube videos as I can. For the past couple of years, I've gotten into embedded development as a second career after a medical disability forced me to leave my first career. So in order to become a better embedded systems developer, I've decided to brush the dust off my electronics skills--and even take a couple courses at the local technical college.

A month or two ago I watched Dave's video on building a starter electronics workshop, and decided to put one together here in my basement office. It's not quite finished, but it is coming along very nicely and I've taken a few pictures of the process that I'll post here.

Anyway, just wanted to say hello to everyone and introduce myself. Hope to meet some of you folks soon!

TB

[tcbetka]

Hmmm...although it says I can add up to 20 images, I couldn't seem to get the system to accept the other two so I'll try again in this post. For whatever reason the "more attachments" link didn't work on the first post--but it seems to now.

BTW, I took Dave's advice and bought a Rigol oscilloscope. I went with the DS1102E 100MHz unit. So far, it's great but I am just getting started at learning to use it.

TB

[peter.mitchell]

looks like it needs more light.

[EEVblog]

Nice compact bench. Good build. 

[Tepe]

looks like it needs more light.

It needs more cool stuff on the shelves.

[lapm]

I think that's a good start. I'm not even that far yet myself 

Personally i would recommend installing more light on main desk area, tiny components are much more nice to handle when they don't get lost in dark corners. Especially small SMD components.

If you have cats, keep them away from the desk. They are masters to hide all your stuff.. I have three, one likes to chew silicone cables, one likes to sit in middle and one finds it fun to play with what ever happens to be there that's small enough..

[ElectroIrradiator]

• PC within reach of work surface? Check!
• Anti-static precautions taken? Check!
• Quality soldering equipment? Check!
• Technical references? Check!
• Scope, DMM & lab PSU? Check!
• Handy components storage? Check?
• Sturdy shelves, able to carry some weight, for test gear and more? Check!

Very nice setup.

[Telequipment]

 That looks nice and neat

[tcbetka]

Thanks guys!

Yes indeed, it DOES need more light. Today I went out and bought a 5-element under-shelf LED arrangement, with a rheostat. I'll mount it tomorrow hopefully. It's only 18" long, but they are designed to be modular so I can simply buy another one and connect the two if there isn't enough light. But those things are pricey though(!!!), so I thought I would start with only one and go from there.

The PC there is a build I did myself a year ago, for a Hackintosh project I was working on. I went with an i7 Sandy Bridge, a couple SSDs and two or three HDDs. I think it has 16GB of RAM, but I might have installed 32GB...I forget. Anyway I got Mac OSX running on it, and that was fine but I sort of moved on. Now I just run Ubuntu 12.04LTS 64-bit on that machine, and do much of my embedded development there. In fact I just got Eclipse IDE working for Arduino and it's really pretty slick--although set-up for each new project is a bit time-consuming. But I am hoping that I can just do a "Save As" and rename...or export the project or something. I'm not yet an expert with Eclipse so that will take a bit of experimentation. But anything beats the Arduino IDE for serious development, so up the learning curve I shall climb.

Anyway, thanks again for checking out the pictures. I'll post more as it moves along. By the way, I think I only have about $50-60 in lumber in the thing so far, and another $50 or so (with shipping) in the ESD mat. So the bench project wasn't too terribly costly, and I also have done pretty well on the other components by following much of Dave's advice in the video blog on YouTube. I already had a fair amount of the stuff including a Bitscope 325N unit and a Weller WESD51 soldering station, but I had to buy most of the other stuff--so Dave's advice was much-appreciated and very useful.

TB

EDIT: I forgot to mention that the bench is 48x28", so it is indeed nicely compact. It sits right next to a larger corner desk unit I use for an "office" and for some video editing work I do from time to time. But that whole area was getting REALLY cluttered as I was getting more and more into electronics, so I cleared out this area and built my own bench. I looked around for a couple weeks to find something pre-built, but really couldn't find anything that would meet my needs...so I built my own. I couldn't find nice edge-joined panels like Dave used for his new benches, so I spent $35 on a 4x8 sheet of 3/4" oak plywood. But that did my bench top, all the shelves and still left a 4x1 foot piece of plywood for a project my wife was working on. So all's well that ends well, I guess...