I've just received my new 2204A, and want to...

look at the mains waveforms on the circuits at our church in advance of replacing a dimmer system for various groups of lights.

I do the IT support at church, and have been given the task of leading the upgrade project for the new lighting and AV systems (classic 'standing in the wrong place at the time' problem!) - steep learning curve, but interesting! Our 'historic' dimmer box needs replacing, and we are progressively introducing LED lighting.

I haven't used an oscilloscope since school - 50-odd years ago... I have set up the PicoScope software on Windows 7, and have used the A and AWG sockets with the probes provided to check that I see the expected waveforms. Hooray!

I bought the TA138 Current Clamp, and a BNC to banana cable. I've had to trim the shrouds on the banana plugs of the clamp to connect it to the sockets on the cable.

However, I see no output from the clamp when I clip it around a mains lead, 'other than the background noise of the universe'.

Am I going in the right direction? Do I need to separate out the 'live' conductor, and just put the clamp around that?

Any assistance would be much appreciated!

If you have the clamp around the whole cable you will be looking at both the live and return signals which will cancel each other out. The clamp needs to go around just the live cable to see the current.

Please take extreme care as you are dealing with mains and, if you have any concerns, please contact support@picotech.com to discuss the matter further.