At the advanced instrumentation course level, you are expected to undertake a significant portion of troubleshooting your self, BEFORE asking the Instructor for help. The following guidelines should help you with your initial phases of troubleshooting and help ensure effective requests for Instructor time.

Troubleshooting Electronic Circuits

• Build your circuit incrementally.  Check the output at each component using an oscilloscope, your Labview program, or Elvis.  You can check that you are getting the expected result.
• Be careful to distinguish between Elvis and Labview on the board.  Make sure the board is turned on. 
• Check the supply voltages for your op amps.
• Check that each of your wires are firmly seated on the breadboard and that connections are in the correct row or column. It is easy to be off by one row and to have an open circuit by accident.

Troubleshooting Elvis

• Make sure the power is on in the back of the whole Elvis unit.
• Make sure power is on to the board- power switch in front.
• Make sure all three LED's in the front left corner of the protoboard are on. If one or more are off,m a fuse has been blown int he Elvis unit and may need to be replaced if you are using that particular power source.

Troubleshooting Problems in LabView

• As in all programming, build your program incrementally and debug as you go.
• Use probes, the debugger (lightbulb), and output to the front panel to track the flow of information through your program.
• Use the various Help functions
• Finding examples in Labview can be an efficient way of programming.  How do I use a For loop in Labview?  How do I pass a local variable?  What is the difference between a chart and graph?  Find an example (Help Menu -> Find Examples)
• The easier the interface is to use, the better.  What information would be most helpful to the medical staff?  Labview has indicators, charts, graphs, graphics, and sound output.