Are static mats actually useful?

[duragezic]

Our senior design project involves working with a microcontroller as part of an evaluation kit so there is a lot of pins exposed. Our sponsor cautioned us when we received it that he likely fried a couple of the pins on his own kit due to ESD.

I've dealt with much PC hardware but never took any precautions with ESD. I've never fried anything over all the time working on PCs, but I know the risk is there.

Since I don't want to mess up the board provided to us, we were recommended to get a static mat. As I understand, a good one as recommended by a technician here can be up to $500! Now we could purchase this if it would really help but that's still a lot of money.

The floor were we will work on this is not carpeted, and our sponsor worked on his on a carpet floor when he had ESD discharge on a few I/O pins.

So what I'm asking is if a static map would be worth it here?

 

[Crono]

What's wrong with a cheap wrist strap, grounded?

 

[duragezic]

Yeah I think the static mat also includes one of those. So I guess I'm wondering what makes a static mat so expensive, i.e. does it actually provide the utility over a simple wrist strap?

 

[Schfifty Five]

You don't need a $500 ESD mat, at least not for your purposes.

I bet you can easily find an ESD mat for $50 or less, depending on the size.

But still, just get a grounding wrist strap...cheapest solution.