Historical offer (2017): This bundle and its membership discount are no longer available. The prices below describe the original offer; they are not current purchase options. See current course pricing for membership plans. We have not announced a replacement hardware bundle or coupon.

In 2017, we worked with Digilent on an Analog Discovery 2 (AD2) bundle for new Contextual Electronics members. The offer paired three months of course access with a discounted tool, BNC breakout board, and probes. At the time, the options were:

• 3 months of Journeyman access + the AD2 bundle — $385 (historical)
• 3 months of Apprentice access + the AD2 bundle — $300 (historical)

At the time, I was excited about the bundle for a few reasons:

Instant signal visibility

In the world of electronics, nothing is really “visible” to the naked eye. Without visualizing what is going on in a circuit, it can be very difficult to troubleshoot circuits they build. Since CE members are normally beginners, their setup is less equipped than people working in the hobby or industry for a while. Circuits are unlikely to work on the first try and this tool will help diagnose issues.

A range of tool availability

How did CE work without test equipment? Well, we didn’t. We have a standard list of low cost equipment, including DMMs, power supplies and soldering equipment. But the key missing piece has always been the oscilloscope. The entry level scopes are $400 and above (though these costs continue to drop); add up necessary test equipement, components on hand and having a range of hand tools for building boards and the startup costs can reach past $500 (even without a scope). With the Analog Discovery 2, we not only get 2 channels of oscilloscopes, but also 2 signal generators, logic analyzer capabilities (including protocol analysis), power supplies, DMMs and more. See the full specifications here.

Portability

Notice I didn’t say a bench tool when talking about the AD2. It's possible to take this device with you on the road or to your next troubleshooting spot. Anyone who travels and attempts to work on electronics understands the pain of lugging along the required equipment.

Software flexibility

Though some would consider this a drawback, I'm enamored by the idea of an all-software oscilloscope. This makes the navigation of the charts a bit more cumbersome (using scrollwheels on a 3 button mouse will help), but overall it allows a range of flexibility and multiple views on your data. For the extra ambitious, there is a scripting console in Waveforms 2015 where users can use Javascript to control the various devices on board. Other programmatic interfaces are possible via the API; there are examples in the Waveforms 2015 reference manual.

See it in action

Though these were not official course videos, I did some live-streaming of explorations of the AD2. As I mentioned in the video above, we'll be releasing more official videos in the months ahead.

Questions?

Contextual Electronics has a forum for discussing electronics projects. The discussion linked below is historical; the bundle described in this post is no longer for sale.