Digilent's WaveForms application provides a user interface to the Digital Discovery. Please download the appropriate WaveForms installer for the operating system (Windows, Linux, Mac) via the WaveForms Resource Center. Then click on the appropriate option below for OS-specific installation instructions.
If WaveForms is already installed, please make sure that it is up to date.
First launch the WaveForms installer, by clicking on it in the Downloads folder. Upon launching the WaveForms installer, the welcome page will be seen. Click Next.
Read the license agreement on this screen, then, if in agreement to it, click I Agree to continue.
In the “Choose Components” screen, a list is presented of each of the things that can be installed. In order to use the Digital Discovery with the WaveForms application, the Adept Runtime, WaveForms Runtime, and WaveForms Application are required.
Note: Even with all components selected, the WaveForms install does not take much hard drive space (<200MB). Digilent recommends that all components are installed.
Click Next.
Click Install.
Wait for the Installation to complete, then click Next.
Finish.
From the downloads folder, open the downloaded .dmg file.
From the desktop, open the WaveForms drive.
Drag the WaveForms icon into the Applications folder. This will install the following components in Applications:
Skip this section if the OS version is newer than OS-X 10.13.
Double click DigilentFtdiDriver.pkg to open the FTDI Driver Installer.
The OS may block the launch of the driver installer. If this is the case, go into the System Preferences' Security and Privacy page and click Open Anyway.
Click Continue.
Click Continue.
Read the license, then if in agreement, click Continue, then click Agree in the popup.
Pick the users to install the drivers for, then click Continue.
Click Install.
Once the installation has completed, click Close.
The OS may block the launch of WaveForms when it is opened for the first time. If this is the case, go into the System Preferences' Security and Privacy page and click Open Anyway.
First, download the package for the Adept Runtime. This program is required for WaveForms to connect to the Digital Discovery and must be installed prior to installing WaveForms.
For systems using .deb packages, (Ubuntu, Fedora, etc), use the built-in package manager to install the Adept Runtime and then WaveForms - typically, a package manager can be opened by double-clicking on the file in question.
Open the file you downloaded for Adept in the previous step.
Click “Install” on the window that pops up.
Open the file you downloaded to install WaveForms.
Click Install in the window that pops up.
This will install the following components:
sudo dpkg -i <path to Adept Runtime .deb file> sudo dpkg -i <path to WaveForms .deb file> sudo apt-get install -f
For systems using .rpm packages, (Red Hat Linux, etc), use the following set of commands in the terminal to install the Adept Runtime and WaveForms from the downloaded packages:
sudo rpm -i <path to Adept Runtime .rpm file> sudo rpm -i <path to WaveForms .rpm file>
If WaveForms has already been installed on the system, replace the “-i” flag passed to the rpm command with “-U” to upgrade the existing installation. For technical support with installing WaveForms on various Linux distributions, please visit the Test and Measurement section of the Digilent Forum.
This section walks through using the Digital Discovery for the first time. Four digital output pins are connected to four digital input pins, and a pattern of type Binary Counter is generated and captured via this simple loopback circuit.
Plug in the Digital Discovery to the computer via the USB cable.
Select the Digital Discovery in the Device Manager. The Device Manager can be accessed anytime from the main toolbar. Open the settings menu and select Device Manager.
Connect DIO 24-27 to DIO 28-31.
Congratulations! In the logic analyzer window you should see a binary counter. The individual signals are displayed as well as the decoded decimal value.
You've now decoded your first Digital Bus. Keep playing around with the tools and visit forum.digilent.com for questions or technical issues.
For additional resources visit the Digital Discovery Wiki Page. There you'll find the reference manuals, tutorials, downloads, a Fritzing image and more.
For detailed steps about how to install and use WaveForms on Raspberry Pi, follow this guide: Getting Started with Raspberry Pi and a Test and Measurement Device.
For technical support, please visit the Test and Measurement section of Digilent Forum.