Situation: I am in the process of building my bench@home. Due to some space restrictions, I also have to opt for possibly small equipment that fits on that bench or in a small storage cabinet besides.
What I want to do: My electronics tinkering will involve the combination of photography with the electronic stuff behind that, like choosing good batteries for cameras, flashes, LED lights.
By checking characteristics of batteries, I basically will do some subset of the cool stuff HJK does, but with slightly different audience.
So for the beginning, I do want to begin with some good quality stuff to form the core of my bench, like a DMM and tools, and to add high-quality components later on.
I would need some way do some logging of measured values over time. My DMM is an Agilent U1272, so I would have some initial logging capability. But I would need to record Voltage, Current, and preferrably Temperature twice (ambient and on battery surface)
What I therefore need, is some way to do some data acquisition. I seriously thought at one point to get a Siglent 3055 with scanner card or similar solutions, but the price tag in combination with some reported bugs regarding logging (and freezes) kept me away from buying it.
I also had some looks for USB solutions like Picotech, Meilhaus Redlab, Red Pitaya or the Digilent Analog Discovery- which should suit my needs, if used correctly.
As I also like to use a non-Windows computer (preferrably FreeBSD, maybe Linux on something like a RasPi), driver compatibility is also of interest. I also don't mind to have some devices do their own logging into a .CSV file on a USB stick or output via RS232 With this kind of serial logging I am familiar and can put some terminal application behind that- data aggregation with some software like HJK/Test Controller is nice, but no killer feature, as I could put them together later on with some kind of scripts, or maybe I use some fancy stuff like MRTG for that ;-)
Anyway, I would need at least 4 inputs. Voltage inputs should be sufficient, as I could use some current converters like the µcurrent Gold or similar devices.
Any suggestions for stuff I haven't already mentioned? (Yes, a Keithley DMM7500 and DAQ card or DMM7510 are nice, but for the moment somewhat out of range...)