Review: iFixit Pro Tech Toolkit

One of my free spaces within the Elektor editorial team goes by the motto: one man’s grot is another man’s gem meaning I am out and about collecting discarded electronic equipment, which gets restored and/or written about for the general amusement of my readership. Recently on one of my friendly pillaging tours in the Eindhoven area I got two Tektronix 2235 oscilloscopes thrown in – literally – when I was just about to shut my car booth, having loaded half an e-workplace ground to a halt I guess around 1990 and then quietly left to collect dust. Fortunately these Tek 2235 scopes are made for field use hence lightweight. BTW they’re 100 MHz dual trace.

If you don't have the time to watch this video all the way, here's the conclusion: "The acquisition of this device is satisfactory despite minor details. For this price, what's remarkable is not only the fact that you hold a true dual display LCR meter in your hand, but also that you get several measurement frequencies, and a test RMS voltage of your choice of 0.1 V or 0.5 V. [...] The Mastech MS8911 has its rightful place in the toolkit of serious amateur and even semi-professional electronics engineers." Click if you want to learn more.

Elektor Business Edition (EBE) offers innovators, electronics engineers and startup companies essential information and insights into the latest products, research and intelligence from the industry. EBE issue 1/2018 for January and February has a focus on Embedded, Microcontrollers and Tools, and is a special edition for the embedded world show in Nuremberg.

Ukule-LED is a modified ukulele with digitally addressable RGB LEDs embedded in its fretboard. These LEDs can light up in con gurations corresponding to di erent chords, which can aid a beginning ukulele player in learning how to play certain chords, or can act as a chord reference for a more advanced player.

Building prototype boards with SMD components by hand is no easy task, and with modern tiny components the results are impossible to inspect with the naked eye. A USB microscope can come in handy there. In the lab we tried out the Andonstar V160, an affordable microscope with a sturdy stand, and here we tell you about it.

Of all electronics engineers I know, an estimated 99.9% are lousy woodworkers. And ready to admit it, myself included. Good news: the Origin can change that. The tool is claimed by its makers, Shaper, to take the mystery out of cutting complex shapes from a piece of wood. Grab Origin by the handles, place it on a piece of wood, and start tracing along the edges of the shape on the touchscreen.

One blade or five, wet or dry, rotating head or fixed, innovation in shaving has always been limited to positioning knives. Skarp, now on the crowdfunding platform Indiegogo, tries a different approach: no blades at all. The idea is to replace the blades by a laser that will never get blunt. To good to be true? Some people seem to think so.

From an enthusiastic reader in Switzerland we received an original letter in the shape of a scrolling LED marquee. This is what it says (in French): “Hello Elektor! Thank you for everything you have taught me about electronics! This project is open source and may be published and improved. 180 LEDs controlled by a single PIC 18F46K22 clocked at 64 MHz, the program is written in C. A gift for you! Best regards, Joël Huser”.

New old stock (NOS) component supplies can be interesting if you are looking for cheap or obsolete components, but since such parts are old by definition and may have been stocked under less than ideal conditions, it is more than highly recommended to test them before usage. There is nothing worse than debugging a circuit only to discover that the problem is due to the “new” part you just inserted.

Most Linux distributions are free, and open-source application software makes the Linux world attractive to technology enthusiasts. Until now, however, most development tools for embedded computing have been available only for Windows PCs.