NLAB: The worlds smallest electronics lab(getnlab.com) |
NLAB: The worlds smallest electronics lab(getnlab.com) |
I find it curious that all their promo shots seem to only show the back of the board. I couldnt find any of the component side, or any information about what components are used. My guess would be:
- a very small dual rail supply
- AVR or STM MCU
- Signal generator is PWM through an RC low pass filter
- Oscilloscope is potentially just the input through a resistor network to shift +/- 5V to 0-5V, maybe a buffer to keep input impedance high.
I just don't see $170-200 of value here, or anything close to that.
The Kickstarter does have product photos of the back in a gif but be forewarned: they don’t include any chip designations.
I hate this kind of marketing, none of these things are true. You can take a community college course on electronics at a pretty reasonable price. There are plenty of online resources that are credible and free. An at home lab can be relatively cost effective with second hand equipment and electronic parts from adafruit/amazon/alibaba.
This is hardly an “electronics lab”.
It’s definitely misleading to say this replaces $1000+ worth of equipment because I’m not sure you can buy equipment with this poor of specs.
A 100kHz scope, 2W fixed dual rail power supply, and a function generator that is anything but arbitrary means at the very least projects are constrained heavily. I think part of the joy of learning is going off of the beaten path a bit, and I think this is limiting enough to prevent that.
I’ve been on the lookout for cheaper stuff to recommend to friends looking to work their way down from classical software engineering towards embedded and I think this is relatively disappointing in that regard. Second hand seems like the way to go economically but I haven’t yet looked into proper sourcing for equipment.