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How to Troubleshoot Octopus Oscilloscopes

"Octopus" oscilloscopes resemble the sea creature because of several tentacle-like wires that extrude from a box. They are used in electrical engineering and testing to determine whether a circuit or device is operating correctly. When the octopus is hooked up to a circuit, the oscilloscope provides visual feedback on the monitor, which allows you to measure intended voltage and current output accurately. If your hand built octopus shows unreliable readings, troubleshoot the basic settings.

Things You'll Need

Octopus schematic
Voltmeter

Instructions

- 1
  Review the octopus schematic for errors in design, if one was used. If not, sketch a schematic based on the build you completed as a way to check your wiring concept for validity.
- 2
  Check your connections. Map each connection to the schematic for the build, then make sure each clip or wire is properly connected to all terminals. Depending on your octopus, there are four or more wires crisscrossing in various directions. A single poor connection causes the entire build to fail.
- 3
  Connect a voltmeter to the octopus terminals to determine it has an output of one milliamp and one volt. Higher currents may destroy circuit devices.

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