Poor Student Home Laboratory Equipment

-instructions guide-
Revision 1

This guide is written for the students who want to have the practical activity at the Project 1
laboratory, and they need laboratory equipment at home. Please note that all tasks which are
presented in this guide are not mandatory, and they may be used only by the students who want
to spend some money on equipment.

1. Soldering Equipment
First, the student will need a soldering tool (a 30W-40W soldering iron or a 100W solering gun).
As information, usually a cheap soldering iron is about 2$- see here). You may need also a
supplementary soldering tip which is about 1$- here. A good soldering gun is about 25$ - here.
To solder the components and the wires, a cheap rosin (about 0.25$, here) and 3$-4$ tin (here or
here) are necessary.

2. Measurement tool for the DC parameters

A useful tool to measure the DC voltages and currents, and sometimes the DC resistance, is a
multimeter. A cheap multimeter is about 3-5$. For example, I found it here, here or here.
 3. Power supply

The cheapest way to built a power supply is to use batteries connected in series (Fig1).

Fig.1- Building a 6V power supply

For example, if you need a DC power supply of about 6V, you may mount 4 batteries of 1.5V in
series. It is a good thing to mount a resistor (between 1Ω and 10Ω) in series with the batteries (to
protect them from accidentally short-circuit at the output) and a capacitor at the output (pay
attention when mounting: the electrolytic capacitor is polarized, the minus terminal is marked!).
Then, you may check the output voltage with your multimeter (Fig.2)

Fig.2- Measuring the power supply output voltage

4. Oscilloscope
The cheapest oscilloscope is to use the soundcard input of an old computer and a software to
measure the signal. Of course, first you’ll have to build some probes. The probe is built by
using a jack plug (which is connected to computer soundcard, it may be found here or here –
please see first the specifications for the PC soundcard and if the jack fits properly to the
soundcard input) and a coaxial cable (1-2 meters). The cable may have 1 (for 1 channel
oscilloscope) or 2 (for 2 channel oscilloscope) internal wires (a coaxial cable recovered from
some damaged headphones or from the trash is enough). A possible implementation for the
scope probe is presented in Fig. 3 (it is a 2-channel probe). The white wires are connected to
the ground (the shield of the cable). The signals may be measured in your circuit by using the
red or orange wires. Please pay attention when measuring the signals, you may damage the
soundcard input if the voltages are too high!!! A good advice would be to use an old sound
card and to put in series with the probe tip a coupling capacitor (100nF-1µF) to block the DC
components and to avoid the damage of the inputs of the soundcard.

Fig.3- Oscilloscope probe (2 channel)

Next step is to download a scope software (here) and to install it.

5. Signal generator
The cheapest signal generator is to use the soundcard output of an old computer and a
software to generate the signal. Of course, first you’ll have to build a probe. The probe is
built by using a jack plug (which is connected to computer soundcard, it may be found here
or here – please see first the specifications for the PC soundcard and if the jack fits properly
to the soundcard input) and a coaxial cable (1-2 meters). The cable will have one internal
wire, if it has 2 wires, the second may be left unconnected. Aa coaxial cable recovered from
some damaged headphones or from the trash is enough. A possible implementation for the
signal generator cable is presented in Fig. 4.

Fig.4- The signal generator cable

Next step is to download a signal generator software (here of here) , to install and run it.
Then, you may connect the scope and the signal generator cables to the PC soundcard (see
Fig. 5).

Fig.5- Connecting the oscilloscope probe and the signal generator cable to the soundcard.
Finally, after selecting the proper input for the oscilloscope/signal generator, you may measure
or generate the signals (Fig. 6).

Fig.6- Scope/signal generator settings example

Please note that both tools cannot be used simultaneously with Scope software from Christian
Zeitnitz, if you want to generate and to measure signals, you have to use 2 different software
packages: one for oscilloscope, another for the signal generator.