NI Elvis board use

The NI ELVIS II prototyping board is an incredibly useful tool to test your circuits before you go through all the work of soldering. Here is how to use some of its basic functions.

A NI ELVIS II Prototyping Board. The board contains a breadboard and channels where you can use a multitude of tools on a computer to test your circuit.

Prep

---

Materials

• NI ELVIS II Prototyping Board
• Components of the circuit you want to test
• Wires

Turning on the ELVIS

• Find a computer attached to a NI ELVIS II Prototyping Board
• Turn on the computer and log on to your WUSTL account
• Turn on the ELVIS
  • Once the ELVIS turns on the NI ELVIS instrument launcher should boot up but if it doesn't you can search for it in explorer

Using the board

---

Setting up your circuit

• The main body of the ELVIS is a large breadboard so you can set up your circuit on it like any other breadboard
• If any parts of your circuit need to be grounded then connect a wire from that part to one of the GRD channels on the left side of the board
• If you need to power your circuit then connect a wire from the FGEN, AC power supply, or DC power supply channel on the left side of the board to the part of the circuit you want to supply power to

Using the board's functions

• If you need to generate a wave function for your circuit then open the Function Generator tool from the NI ELVIS Instrument Launcher, set the parameters of your wave in there, and click run
  • The wave function will come out of the FGEN channel
• If you want to measure voltage in the circuit then connect wires from wherever you want to measure voltage to the analog input channels on the top left side of the board. Then open the Oscilloscope tool from the NI ELVIS Instrument Launcher, set the channel to whichever channel you have your circuit connected to, and click run
  • You may need to adjust the time scale and voltage scale, as well as change the trigger type