Suggestions wanted - Your handy dandy testing station

[duck_arse]

one of those three led hex inverter logic probes, high-low-pulse train, would be nice for the blue boxers. possibly good for fuzz work.

a white/pink noise source, don't know what they're for.

a ramp generator, so you can sweep the included audio osc to some limited extent.

some sort of hyperflanger test jigger.

[amptramp]

An LFO that you can use to check out tremolo, phaser and flanger builds.

A power supply.  Make it variable if you use batteries.

[davent]

A couple people have mentioned sockets/clips for transistor testing. I bought some spring actuated terminal blocks with 0.1" spacing for use on a GE tester, works great with the floppy GE leads.



For odd lengthed transistor  leads you can take the metal inserts from terminal blocks and solder those directly to your PCB then the leads will pass through where necessary. You could also take the terminal block apart,  drill through the plastic housing, re-assemble and again the leads would pass through to accomodate various lead lengths.



The metals sockets from SIP sockets can be sunk up to their necks in the pcb, the backs ground back so you now have a hollow socket to take various lengths of leads from a transistor.

[tubegeek]

One of my best buys of 2013 was this, an inductance/capacitance meter;

How much/where?

[gjcamann]

I'd also like to measure capacitance on MOSFET's, some can be pretty hi, which can affect your high frequency response.

This german guy has published his design for an AVR based transistor tester with code. The original project in German (the NEVER of these Europeaners!?!?)
http://www.markus.org/Electronics/Projects/AVR-Transistortester/

I think it would be a good starting point. Maybe get the basics working and hopefully people here would be willing to get behind it and add what they would like to see.

I have a hunch that all those cheep transistor testers on Ebay use this - or a similar PIC based project. 

[Seljer]

A very fast rise time square wave generator can come in handy to do measurements with an oscilloscope. Can be easily made out of the fastest CMOS chip you can find in your junk drawer and 3 or 4 other components to get it oscillating + a BNC connector.

[merlinb]

Can't believe no one has said this yet:

True RMS converter. (To make true RMS measurements on your cheap DMM).
Audio frequency millivoltmeter converter (ordinary DMMs usually only give accurate readings at mains frequency).

Why are all you people measuring diode forward drop??? Like, when do you need to know that so accurately??

[Mark Hammer]

I think oftimes it's not so much to know accurately, but rather simply to know whether a given diode is near its nominal value, or at the upper or lower tail of its tolerance range.  Makes a difference for some things.

[GGBB]

Why are all you people measuring diode forward drop??? Like, when do you need to know that so accurately??

As Mark said, it's not so much about accuracy.  For me, it came up when designing/testing my orange smoothie compressor (orange squeezer derivative).  I just wanted to compare various diodes at low current to find the lowest ones.  Stated Vf for diodes on data sheets is typically at a much higher current than a pedal's signal, and the vast majority of commonly used ones are all 1V anyway (but at different currents), so the data sheets are pretty much useless for comparisons of this nature.  Unless they have Vf vs current graphs, which some do and some don't.  Even when they do they don't have very good precision and aren't consistent between data sheets.  Plus, again like Mark said, tolerance can be a fairly significant factor in this kind of application.

[ic]

Some simple form of oscilloscope. Laptops go obsolete, and can be had for almost nothing. Generally they can run a sound-card oscilloscope.

I use one of these;

http://www.gabotronics.com/development-boards/xmega-xprotolab.htm

Fits on a breadboard, cheap, good enough for audio frequencies and beginners like myself.

[merlinb]

I use one of these;
http://www.gabotronics.com/development-boards/xmega-xprotolab.htm
Fits on a breadboard, cheap, good enough for audio frequencies and beginners like myself.

Very cute! Although for the same price you can buy an actual oscilloscope, second hand.

[PRR]

I always read junction drops on a vacuum-tube needle-meter, a Heath "VTVM" with resistance scales.

Also never lusted for RMS except when I was trimming lamp-dimmers. If it is Sine, the calibration is plenty close enough. If it is not a good sine, and I'm not heating/lighting, I don't know why I'd want the RMS?

The point about cheap meters only accurate well below 400Hz is spot-on.

[ic]

I use one of these;
http://www.gabotronics.com/development-boards/xmega-xprotolab.htm
Fits on a breadboard, cheap, good enough for audio frequencies and beginners like myself.

Very cute! Although for the same price you can buy an actual oscilloscope, second hand.

To be honest I do have a CRO that I paid a few hundred dollars for about 10 years ago, but it takes up most of my workspace so it's been consigned to the attic. The little one lives on my breadboard and is also a signal generator, does basic frequency analysis, and can be used like an audio probe when debugging circuits. The screen however is very small, and there are a lot of button pushes to get through some fairly deep menus. It can be connected to your computer via USB but I haven't tried this feature. On the whole I find it very useful, and dare I say it, "handy dandy!"