Hi all,
I had a neat thought earlier today because I realized that I am really hard to shop for. So, I figured here might be a neat place to get peoples input on the tools, gadgets, etc. that they use day to day and really like.
I’m no authority on “EDC” or whatever you want to call it, but I’ll start off with the things I carry with me basically everywhere.
- Staedtler 925 25-05 and Mars Plastic 528 50 Stick Eraser
This is my dream team combo of pencil and eraser. Seriously, you’d have to pay me to use anything else. The pencil is aluminum, but well balanced, and feels like a friggin tank. The stick erasers are also awesome, erasing pretty much perfectly. I started using these erasers when I was taking AP Music Theory, and making a lot of mistakes. Then, during my senior year of high school I bought myself the pencil because I just didn’t like wood pencils and cheap plastic mechanical pencils weren’t my style.
- Macbook Pro M1 Pro, 32gb RAM
Yeah. I’m a Mac guy. But I write too much software to deal with the NT kernel’s inability to add something to it’s path without 12 restarts, and I consider my time to be actually valuable so I don’t run something like Arch or Manjaro. Plus I’m an edgy hipster so I like to be on the bleeding edge of modern consumer RISC computing. I’ve actually been really impressed with Apple as many people have, as my laptop can run Altium in Parallels. But it’s running on an OS pretending to be another OS pretending to be a different CPU architecture. And it’s beyond just usable, I can and have done the entirety of the schematic capture of two pretty complicated boards in it now, the only thing it struggles with is layout of multilayer boards with more than 40-50 components.
- Logitech MX Master 3
This is a sweet mouse. I like it a lot. I have it paired to both my desktop and laptop, so I just hit the button on the bottom when I want to switch. It mostly alleviates the pain of having to do things like Altium or CAD with a trackpad, although in high school I did get very good at trackpad Onshape.
- Saleae Logic 8
A super nice logic analyzer that I have yet to find a limit of uses for. I know the peeps at REV use these things a bunch. I got it for like half off due to their maker/hobbyist/education discount.
- Fluke 115 Multimeter and Probemasters leads
I’ve heard a lot of people talk about the 115 being “underpowered” but honestly, as an EE, it’s everything I need in a handheld meter. It’s got all the basic ranges you would ever need, is built like a tank, and the battery lasts for a while. The probemasters leads are also awesome. They’re luxuriously flexible, have interchangeable tip accessories, and are great for picking up signals off of the side of SMD passives.
- Raspberry Pi Pico
IMO, the Arduino Killer. And by that, I mean the ATMega328p or ATMega32u4 based MCU dev board killer. The Pi foundation did an excellent job on the C SDK for these, and they have cool features like two cores (yeah, weird right?) and a cool little IO controller they call PIO. They also have DMA, SPI, I2C, UART, and all the other stuff you’d expect from a modern ARM micro. My only gripe is there’s no hardware CAN, but KevinOConnor wrote a great PIO CAN library for the Klipper project that I’ve been using lately.
- TS80P Soldering Iron
Basically my go-to iron now. I also have the TS100, but the fact that I can use this thing with my USB-C battery bank is a game changer. It heats up fast and is plenty powerful to do quick in the field repairs. I’d still recommend something like a Hakko FX-888d or my personal favorite soldering station, the Hakko FX-100 (curie point stations like this one or Metcals are great) if you’re doing high thermal mass stuff like big copper polygons in PCBs or soldering motor wires in FRC.
- Owala Water Bottle
Seems like a weird addition to the list of tools so far, but seriously this thing is pretty sweet. It has both a spout and straw, so when I’m working out I can drink from the spout but if I’m working then the straw. Plus, it’s super easy to hand wash, which is a big deal when you live in a dorm like me.
- Mitutoyo Digimatic 0-6" Caliper
Best friggin calipers ever. If you want to spend more, get the coolant proof ones. I don’t use them in places where I’m dealing with flood coolant, so I just got the regular ones. My only regret is not getting the 8" ones instead, as literally the first day I had them I had to measure something that was like just under 7" long. I ended up using a 6-7" micrometer.
- Wera Allen Keys/L Keys
I hate cheap hex keys. Like, it’s a tool I use so much that there’s literally no point in cheaping out on a set of them. And the weras are pretty much the gold standard. My only complaint with them is the older ones I’ve used at various other places have started to have the heat shrink like material on the shafts grow and slip around some.
- iFixit Manta Driver
This usually stays in my desk, but it has literally every single bit under the sun. Like, there are some security bits in this thing that I’m not sure you should have from a legal standpoint. You could totally go Kevin Malone on an elevator panel or any other tamper resistant thing with this screwdriver set, plus they have thrust? (not sure but kinda feels like it) bearings in the ends like nice jewelers screwdrivers.
- Wraparound Safety Glasses (McMaster 5734T13)
These are super luxurious safety glasses, and they’re pretty cheap all things considered as well. I picked them up from McMaster kind of on a whim, and I really like them.
That’s all I got for now, let me know what kinds of tools you guys love!
-ZB
