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function generator in Virtual Bench not working properly

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Hello everyone,

 

I am going to preface this post by saying that I am a Mechanical Engineer, and although I am familiar with basic electrical principles, I am by no means an expert. With that in mind, please expect a certain level of ignorance and naivety on my part. Now, on to my question...

 

I recently purchased a Virtual Bench because it seemed like the ideal option to give me basic functionality for my electronics projects. After unboxing it, I tested out each of the functions, and was happy with what it could do given my needs. At this time the function generator was giving a solid, consistent signal. However, now that I am using the function generator for a project, it is no longer giving me a consistent signal; when I read the signal back into channel one the waveform's amplitude grows and shrinks at random, and the signal shifts left and right erratically. Can anyone think what might be causing this? As far as I know I didn't do anything that would have damaged it, but then again I am a bit of a novice when it comes to this, and I'm afraid I may have broken this unit in less than a week. Any feedback from this community would be greatly appreciated. Thanks! 

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Solution
Accepted by topic author bwoy24

It's possible that the signal is being aliased by the scope, which happens when the function generator is at a high frequency but the scope is at a low sample rate and so it can'f fully capture the waveform.

 

In this situation, what happens when you click the scope's "Auto" button in the upper left? If the behavior corrects itself, then aliasing was the problem. If it's still broken, please share a screenshot or a gif of what you see.

Joe Friedchicken
NI Configuration Based Software
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Principal Software Engineer :: Configuration Based Software
Senior Software Engineer :: Multifunction Instruments Applications Group (until May 2018)
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That did the trick, thanks Joe Friedchicken! I really appreciate it.

 

-bwoy24

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