Need tool/equipment recommendations for analog modeling research

[poonna]

I’ve been wanting to get into analog modeling research for quite sometime, and now I’m going to seriously get started. My background is in computer science with basic knowledge in electronics and DSP. Those are things I have to work on improving.

Now, for the equipment, I think I need to at least get a scope. Here’s one of the thing I’m not sure about. There’s a 4-channel 8-bit scope like Rigol DS1054Z, and then there’s a 2-channel 16-bit scope like PicoScope 4262. I’m not sure whether higher bit depth or more channels is more important. Some suggestions found online seems to state that I could use audio interface if higher vertical precision is required, but that will compromise on the frequency resolution. Any suggestions here?

Are there also other equipment/measurement tools I need to consider? I need a desktop variable power supply for use with circuit prototypes. I guess that’s one, but I’m sure there are many more things I should have.

Your suggestions are welcome. Thanks!

[vortico]

Scopes are useful for visual qualitative feedback, but for data measurement, I personally just use a DC-coupled audio interface and software and Python scripts on my laptop. Data acquisition is kind of useless without a signal generator to drive your circuit with transients, sine waves, sine sweeps, fixed voltages, etc. Other people use digital scopes and function generators. It all depends on what you're modeling.

A power supply is also necessary. Having 4 channels on this is a nice luxury, but you could get by with 2.

[resynthesis]

You'll probably need a way of testing and matching components accurately. Obviously an accurate multimeter will go some of the way but, depending on what you're interested in building, you may find transistor testers or valve testers useful. Alternatively, there are some useful tools that can be cobbled together pretty easily.

[stratum]

A scope can still be useful if you are building circuits yourself, especially when building guitar amp preamps - incorrectly built high gain guitar preamps tend to oscillate at inaudible frequencies and without a scope it can be difficult to figure out what's wrong.

[mystran]

Are there also other equipment/measurement tools I need to consider?

Spice.

For the most part, until you can at least approximately match what Spice does for basic circuits, there's really not much point wasting time messing with real-life circuits and all the noise and measurement errors (eg. poke your probe in the wrong place, and it WILL change the behaviour of some circuits, sometimes quite drastically) that comes with it.

Spice is also a great way to reduce the amount of magic smoke emitted when you actually want to build custom circuits.

[poonna]

Thanks for all the suggestions! I didn’t think about testing equipment, so that’s something to consider. I was thinking of starting from building basic circuits and using Spice to simulate them, then later making my own approximations. But starting purely with Spice as mystran suggested might also be a good idea.

BTW, are there pointers for getting started on Spice approximations? I reckon it must be quite math heavy, but I’m thrilled to dust up my long abandoned puny math skills.

[stratum]

https://www.swarthmore.edu/NatSci/echee ... /MNA3.html