Fair enough, but on the flip side - you either want to get into electronics or not. If not, there's no real point in spending the money, even if it's $2. If you do, then you probably don't yet have an understanding of what features you need, and the cheapest option will actually hold you back.
Some specific issues: first, the number of inputs. A lot of circuit debugging is about "let's see how signal A looks like when signal B happens" (B might be a bus clock or something like that). So, a lot of the time, you need two inputs, not one.
Second issue: even hobby MCUs generally run faster than 4 MHz, so you might need more bandwidth to monitor I/O, even for old-school Arduino stuff - let alone RP2040.
Third issue: for anything analog, from audio equipment to household appliances, the 0-6 V input range just doesn't cut it.
I'm not trying to dunk on this project: I think it's about as good as you can do for the price, and it's clearly a passion thing for the author. But if you can afford it, and if you want to learn electronics, a "real" oscilloscope is almost certainly a better deal.
> you either want to get into electronics or not. If not, there's no real point in spending the money, even if it's $2
It's fuzzier than that; there are hobbies that look fun but I can't decide if I want to fully invest into them, but having a cheap, but not-great equipment is a good stepping stone. Besides, beginners won't have the skill to fully use fully-featured pro-level-gear. A cheap soldering iron is great for those looking to get their feet wet; sure the lack of precise temperature control can be a hinderance, but investing in an expensive soldering station is wasteful if one decides that it's not really for them.
Ironically, beginners would benefit the most from a good soldering station, proper liquid flux and leaded solder. Seasoned electronics guys can probably solder anything with a cigarette lighter and a scrap piece of metal, but using proper tools makes a huge difference when you're just starting and might mean not dropping the hobby altogether because of a lousy first experience..
> Seasoned electronics guys can probably solder anything with a cigarette lighter and a scrap piece of metal
This made me laugh. In college in the late 80's I repaired a roommate's not-quite vintage C64 fastloader cartridge with a bad wire bodge using a lighter and the tine of a dining hall fork...
> having a cheap, but not-great equipment is a good stepping stone.
I don't agree for something like this. The problem is that beginners often don't understand how to deal with the limitations of equipment--all they understand is that something is wonky and they don't know how to fix it.
In addition, bad equipment can make your initial impressions so painful that they prevent you from going further. Oscilloscopes, cheap soldering tools, etc. all have this effect. It's not unique to electrical engineering though--super cheap guitars are painful to play while something just $150 more is dramatically easier to deal with.
Where cheap equipment shines is when a beginner has been at it long enough and becomes "dangerous". They know just enough to do things but not enough to avoid things that will destroy their equipment. That's when the $20 "whatever" is a blessing because you'll get annoyed but you won't be distraught if you blow it up. Even as someone experienced, I semi-regularly destroy a $10 logic analyzer because the circuit I was analyzing wasn't doing what I thought it was (of course, this is mostly laziness--since the analyzer is merely $10 I don't take the time to double check things that I would if I were to put my Agilent analyzer on it)
> Besides, beginners won't have the skill to fully use fully-featured pro-level-gear.
Quite often, pro gear is better for beginners. For a beginner, an "Auto Scale" button on their scope that does the right thing is a godsend. Even I use it all the time. Sure, I can dial the signals in quickly, but "Auto Scale" does the right thing 99% of the time with a single button press.
Even with soldering, a Metcal system maintains the temperature exactly where you need it. You don't have to worry about having too much/not enough heat on the component you are working with. You don't have to worry about the calibration on your soldering station. A Metcal will pump a lot more energy into a big hunk of transformer and a lot less energy into a QFP integrated circuit. Sure, someone experienced can adjust for this on a Hakko, but a beginner is having a tough enough time getting solder down and the soldering iron in the right place without knocking the IC all over the place and doing it all through a microscope.
> investing in an expensive soldering station is wasteful if one decides that it's not really for them.
Used Metcal soldering systems are "expensive" ($250-$500), but they also resell for almost the exact same amount you bought them. Cheap soldering stations won't resell for anything. So, all the money you spend on a cheap station is lost if you decide not to go further while the expensive station cost all gets recovered.
Regarding soldering, I think a Pinecil [1] is a suitable soldering iron for beginners. It's affordable and since the heating element is in the tip it will make soldering much easier compared to older irons or soldering stations.
Could someone recommend one starting out (something beginner could use and has enough, good functions for continued use into later advanced projects without running into limitations for 'most' projects).
Would be helpful to understand the what limitations might be encountered such at the frequency.
Buy a Pinecile[1] from Pine64. It's currently discounted to $25.99 (excluding shipping), and it's both cheap and has a great feature list that makes soldering a breeze.
Rich designed it with trigger IO pins to be able to easily chain them. While the UI doesn't support managing multiple Flea-Scopes at once, you can just open the UI multiple times, which does seem like a reasonable option to me.
As as others have pointed out before, there's just no alternatives in this form factor. The scope is tiny, and for what it is it packs quite a punch. 3.3V and 5V are standard logic levels which will suffice for quite a lot of basic probing. Being made for students, it does likely everything that would be required of it in an educational environment. How well this pans out in real-life we'll see soon.
Granted that with enough money and space at hand there are much better options out there.
Some specific issues: first, the number of inputs. A lot of circuit debugging is about "let's see how signal A looks like when signal B happens" (B might be a bus clock or something like that). So, a lot of the time, you need two inputs, not one.
Second issue: even hobby MCUs generally run faster than 4 MHz, so you might need more bandwidth to monitor I/O, even for old-school Arduino stuff - let alone RP2040.
Third issue: for anything analog, from audio equipment to household appliances, the 0-6 V input range just doesn't cut it.
I'm not trying to dunk on this project: I think it's about as good as you can do for the price, and it's clearly a passion thing for the author. But if you can afford it, and if you want to learn electronics, a "real" oscilloscope is almost certainly a better deal.