A soldering iron and a multimeter cover 95% of an embedded prototype. Why the oscilloscope and logic analyzer can usually wait.
People imagine an embedded prototype demands a costly bench of instruments. In practice, a decent soldering iron and a multimeter cover roughly 95% of situations at the start. The oscilloscope and logic analyzer are valuable, but rarely on the critical path of the first few weeks.
What the multimeter alone can do
Checking continuity, measuring a supply voltage, detecting a short, confirming a regulator at the right value: all of this is done with a multimeter. Most early bugs are assembly faults, cold joints, solder bridges, wrong pin, which these two tools reveal immediately.
The iron repairs those faults on the spot, with no exotic diagnosis.
Software debug before signal debug
For firmware, Serial.print remains the real debug tool: it exposes state, read values and execution flow with no extra hardware. For an I2C bus, an address scanner confirms in a few lines which component responds. The logic analyzer only becomes useful when the protocol itself is suspect.
The takeaway: buy the oscilloscope when you know precisely which waveform you are looking for. Before that, it slows you down more than it helps.