Getting started with Analog Discovery 2

[JColvin]

Repost of behalf of @Vandy12

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Greetings from Tennessee from a new member. Was excited to get my new Digilent Discovery 2. 

I read thru the first page of the book and loaded in the wave, kept the defaults, pressed the start

button per instructions and it said now the wave is moving!! The wave didn't move. It sat there. I am an 

old geezer trying to learn the basics so I don't know how to troubleshoot this. Kind of a bummer the very

first few steps didn't work. I was thinking maybe the wave is moving but so fast I can't see it? Not sure how

to adjust or if it is just not moving for some reason. Click WaveGen, click arrow. 

Sounds simple. Nothing.

 

[JColvin]

Hi @Vandy12,

I'm not certain what book you are referring to; I thought at first you might be referring to the Real Analog Circuits 1 course, but I couldn't find a clear introduction that gave instructions for performing an operation within WaveForms.

Based on your description of what the book explains, it sounds like the tutorial is using an older version of WaveForms or is using demo mode. There are some examples for the Analog Discovery 2 available on it's Resource Center here though: https://reference.digilentinc.com/reference/instrumentation/analog-discovery-2/start.

Let me know if you have any questions!

Thanks,
JColvin

[Vandy12]

Hello JColvin. Thank you for trying to assist to get me started. I am referring to the Analog Discovery 2 home page. There is a green "Getting Started" button and it walks you thru a short tutorial so you can watch the wave go by. Wave didn't move. I had four messages when I signed on today including yours. Maybe just a cue I had responses? Don't know. What I do know is I read your post, went away from the page, and then when I went back all of the messages were gone. I didn't delete anything. Then I went on a hunt to try and find how to access these notifications. Nothing now in email box. So I then searched my name and finally found my post. Where can you go to find your posts and answers and any notifications? So far all I can do is search in the search box. Do I need to hook up the Discovery 2 to a signal generator to see the wave? Probably asking dumb questions I would find the answers to when I get more acclimated to all of the things it can do a bit better. Just a little disheartening to try this simple introduction and fail. Thank you JColvin. 

[Vandy12]

PS: I was born and raised right next door to you. Tigard, Oregon. Now in Tennessee. Now I also feel really dumb. 

The bell at top of the page. Notifications. Found my messages there. I didn't know bell was notifications

until I clicked on it. This is what happens when you don't read the directions. HA!! Thanks. 

[Vandy12]

I went back to the Analog Discovery 2 page. If you click on the green getting started button at the bottom of the first page it says, "Take a measurement." This what didn't work for me. 

[JColvin]

Hi @Vandy12,

Oh, I understand what the confusion is now; it's a nuance in semantics that Digilent will need to correct.

The step that says

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Leave all settings as defaults, and click the green arrow at the top of the window to play the wave.

is not intending to imply that the sine wave will actually start moving on the screen. It is instead supposed to indicate that the Arbitrary Waveform Generator (or Wavegen as the instrument is called in the WaveForms software) is now enabled and generating a signal. The corresponding display is there to show what one period of your chosen signal should look like, with the Ready/Running/Stop in the upper left of that window display being an additional visual indicator of whether or not the signal is being generated.

Similarly for the Scope instrument with the step that says

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Leave all settings as defaults and click the green play arrow to begin capturing data.

Presuming you already have the Scope and Wavegen wires connected, you will not necessarily see the captured data moving with the default settings as the oscilloscope will are set to trigger on Channel 1 rising above 0V, consequently keeping the incoming sine wave centered on the display. You would be able to see it "moving" by either changing the trigger source, changing the type of wave being generated by the Wavegen tool, or disconnecting and then reconnecting the wires.

To help make the language more clear, I'm thinking of adjusting the language in that Getting Started Guide to say "green run arrow" to "generate the signal". Would that make it unambiguous for you?

Thanks,
JColvin