I’m getting interested in some digital hardware projects. I’ve got plenty of supplies from over the years.

To really get into it, I need to repair my oscilloscope. I believe it will cost about $1000 to repair it and calibrate it. I used to work at a company that has calibration and repair as one of their core services, so since they’re close, they’d be a good place for it. I’ve also got a USB logic analyzer. The manufacturer doesn’t exist any more and it only runs on Windows XP. I can run the XP in a virtual machine, but I might be able to get a dinosaur laptop that could be more convenient.

I’ve looked around and a comparable scope is a lot more than $1k. There are some scopes less than $1000, but they aren’t nearly as capable as what I have.

I’ve got a few different things I can do. One of thing in my toolbox is a Xilinx FPGA starter kit. I haven’t really done more than open the box and play with the design language. I also have an Arduino that is idle, a temperature gauging chip and a few other Atmel AVR processors.

On an unrelated topic… I’ve been wanting to clean my house’s gutters. I was texting a friend and found out that he and his dad have started a gutter cleaning business. My friend said that they would come by soon to give a quote.

There’s more than enough ways to spend money….