Then you might ask Santa for an oscilloscope. I bought this a month ago and are extremely pleased with it http://www.dealexcel.com/rigol-ds1052e-50mhz-band-widths-2channel-digital-oscilloscope_p363.html
As most of you I started out thinking that an oscilloscope would be cool but first of all I really don’t know electronics that well and probably can’t use it right, and it costs a lot of money.... So I made myself a soundcard probe and downloaded some free software. OK, it gives me some readings but you might end up blowing your soundcard or your motherboard if it’s integrated.
So I saved up and got me this PC based from Sparkfun http://www.sparkfun.com/products/9263 it’s good and the 8 bit analyzer is great but with only one channel it’s hard to follow the signal into different stages.
Still a novice at electronics I want to learn and see what is going on in my circuits. So I saved up and got myself the RIGOL DS1052E. The decision to go for the RIGOL was very much influenced by http://www.youtube.com/user/EEVblog and his review of the scope.
So I got my scope from www.dealexec.com and had no problems there. Rather the opposite actually as they had marked the value of the item at $80,- (at no request of mine) that saved me some money on the Norwegian customs.
So if you have been a good boy in 2011, or have an understanding wife like mine (she only saw that it was 12% off and said go for it!) get yourself an oscilloscope and your starting figuring out stuff on a completely different pace.
And it looks cool :-)
