– Ohm’s Law (use Excel or the equivalent from Open Office) – Calculator for resistors for LED’s (see appendix for Internet resources) (pros : cheap (free!), cons : limited in bandwidth to audio frequencies)
#ELECTRONIC WORKBENCH PROJECTS GENERATOR#
– Waveform generator output by headphone socket – (09) I recycled my old Panasonic laptop for use on my workbench – (08) Safety Glasses (I tell my students : ‘Just because you have two eyes, it doesn’t mean you have one to spare!’) – (07) Flood light (I prefer incandescent lighting instead of fluorescent). I don’t need batteries – I’m using it at my workbench after all!
#ELECTRONIC WORKBENCH PROJECTS PC#
– (06) an old Black & Decker cordless screwdriver with a cord to replace the non-functioning batteries – no batteries to recharge or wear out and lots of torque (powered 5v from the PC power supply – see #19, below). A multimeter does not have to be expensive – I bought one at Canadian Tire for $29.99 and it included (besides the normal AC and DC voltage, resistance and amperage measurements) a frequency counter, a square wave test signal output and a capacitance measuring function. – (03) Stereo amp (on shelf up near the ceiling) & headphones (for music while you work) – (02) Function Generator (good for injecting test signals). My conscience would not allow me to sell the first one (I got it for free), so I gave it to one of my friends. After using it for a while and realising it is a top class tool for electronics, I looked around for a slightly more modern dual trace one. I never thought anyone would give away one but a really nice lady gave me a single trace oscilloscope (not the one you see in the photo). Freecycle is a sort of club (the Montreal one was on Yahoo) where everything is given or offered for free. One suggestion for getting an oscilloscope or other equipment – check to see if there is a Freecycle site in your city (I got the impression that there is one in every major city in North America – at any rate there is one in Montreal). – (01) oscilloscope (on a shelf made of an old stand for a tractor feed printer). Just before submitting this entry, I bought some 2nd-hand lab equipment (#’s 01 and 02): The actual workbench frame is made from an old computer desktop I found in the trash. This is because the next generation of iPod Nano was introduced during this contest. Lorne will be getting an Apple Nano iPod that is similar to the one pictured on the original contest page.
The winner is Lorne Wilkins for entry #31. It was nice to see that so much could be achieved in small places. It was very hard to come up with a winner for this contest since there were so many great entries, many of them describing fantastic layouts and equipment ideas. These entries have been viewed more than 11000 times so far! They will continue to provide inspiration for years to come when people are looking for bench ideas. We had 34 fantastic entries for the Workbench Contest.