Oscilloscope Newbie

[galantida]

Hello,

I just received my DSO4102B in the mail. When I turn it on everything looks fine. It seems to function completely normally except no matter what I connect it to it only returns a flat line with some random noise. I have spend nearly an entire day reading the manual and watching videos on how to use oscilloscopes with no luck. I connected the probe to the wave form generator test points on the front of the scope and pressed auto but still no change. Even when I use the voltage and time dials to zoom in and out. I understand the concept but this is the first time I have ever used an oscilloscope so this very well could be my mistake. Is there any advice for a newbie or is this thing broken?

Hope someone can help.

 

[galantida]

Yay, I got it working. I decide to connect it to house current. I figured if its broken I might as well finish it off. Well it displayed a 60 cycle sine curve. Then I ran the Arduino blink example and generated a square wave all is working fine. I am still not sure why my previous tests were not working.

One was generating a clock signal from the Arduino. This might be an Arduino problem that I will look more closely into.

Two I guess I don't understand how to use the wave generator on the from of my scope. It has two pins that I connect the positive of both my probes too. Nothing changes on my scope when I do that. I would be interested if anyone could help me understand how to use those.

Dave

 

[(*steve*)]

I figured if its broken I might as well finish it off

Aaaah!

no matter what I connect it to it only returns a flat line with some random noise.

Did you perhaps forget to connect the ground to the circuit you were measuring?

 

[BobK]

Or had a trigger level set too high,
or had trigger on the other channel,
or had external trigger,
or had it set for manual trigger.
or had some special function activated,
or had the vertical gain set too low,
or had the time base set at 100 seconds per division,
or...

DSOs are difficult to use.

Bob