Tools and Techniques

This is the beginning of a page to reorganize Techniques and to include both software and hardware tools and to perhaps distinguish, design, debuggin and building tools. Just an idea for now not linked into the wiki.

Design and Building

Circuit Schematics

Schematic Capture

Circuit simulation

Common Hand Tools Soldering Iron

CAD

CAM

Micprocessor

Assemblers Compilers Simulators

Test Equipment

Oscilliscopes Logic Anilizers Signal Generators Multimeters Power Meters

Microcontroller Programmers In Circuit Serial Bootloaders

Debugging

InCircuit Debugging

PC Sound Card Based Test Instruments

The sound card on a PC cna be used either to capture signals or to generate them. Normally it is limited to acting in the audio range, about 20 Hz to 20 K Hz. You cna do this without any additional hardware, or extend the capabalities with some external hardware. This gives you a simple way to get Oscilliscopes, signal generators, and signal analizers. Below are some links, you can probably find more ( and post them here please ). This is not to be confused with instruments that are PC based, but are highly dependent on external hardware ( we should have a section on them sometime soon ).

Signal Generator

At http://www.slatecreekengineering.com/SoundArb.htm

SoundArb is a free program from David Sherman Engineering Co. that allows you to control a PC sound card like you would a conventional function generator. You can select standard waveforms, load arbitrary waveforms from a text wave table file, control the frequency and amplitude of the waveform, and select from a versatile set of triggering modes. With a stereo sound card, one channel can be used as a "sync" output.

At http://www.epanorama.net/links/pc_sound.html scroll down to: heading "Signal generator software"

Signal Analizers

also heading on:

Signal waveform analyzing tools

also heading on

FFT spectrum analyzer programs