We're having a lot of fun getting up and running with our Hacklab. None of us are professional electronics engineers, so we weren't really sure what we needed. I myself have built a few electronics projects in the past, but never really had the opportunity to setup a dedicated lab. My work has always been in a spare bedroom on a desk next to my PC working with the bare minimum of tools. So its been great fun having a budget and the ability to go out and get whatever we needed to make the lab complete and functional. We made one gigantic order from Adafruit who by the way are an awesome little company that make great stuff.

A few of the key things we picked up that I'm really happy with:

This DS1052E Oscilloscope is frankly awesome. I've not had access to a scope for so long I had forgotten how much fun they are. One of our marketers has a small recording studio so he wants to build this B16 VCA Compressor kit to add to his collection. So we'll get to make great use of the scope then - perhaps we'll even put together a little post about how to use the scope to confirm the device is working.

The  Saleae Logic 16 is a great piece of kit. I personally have the 8 channel model and it has really saved me so much time over the years that it was worth every penny. If you're doing any sort of digital communication between devices then this is an essential tool making it so much easier to debug your signals and figure out whats going wrong.

The most essential tool in our arsenal, the new Digital Hakko FX-888D is a great little soldering iron and a welcome upgrade to the standard and much loved FX-888.

After getting all our kit out, I couldn't resist getting our first smell of solder in the air. We have a couple of these Adjustable breadboard power supply kits and I had some willing colleagues eager to try out their first soldering iron so we set to work. It was late so we didn't get much done, but the first solder in our hacklab has been laid and its time to begin the real fun!