How do the arms work?

[Konamaster]

Hola, soy nuevo en esto del kerbal space y hace poco desbloquee los brazos (el ligero y el mediano) y no se muy bien como funcionan xd, alguien me guía en mi camino en este maravilloso videojuego 

[Moderator added translation]
Hi, I'm new to kerbal space and I recently unlocked the arms (light and medium) and I don't know how they work xd, someone guides me on my way in this wonderful video game

[James Kerman]

Welcome to the forum @Konamaster! 

I think you are talking about the 'anomaly scanners' you can test them by finding one of the boab trees near the KSC (head towards the mountains, you should see one soon). You need to be fairly close, right click on the arm and deploy. You need to test how it deploys before you head out because obstructions on the rover or the surface may interfere with deployment.

An English translation has also been added to your post because we have a rule that all posts, outside of the international section require a translation because not all browsers and devices support automatic translation.

[Translation]
¡Bienvenido al foro @Konamaster!
Creo que estás hablando de los 'escáneres de anomalías', puedes probarlos encontrando uno de los árboles boab cerca del KSC (dirígete hacia las montañas, deberías ver uno pronto). Necesitas estar bastante cerca, hacer clic derecho en el brazo y desplegar. Debe probar cómo se despliega antes de salir porque las obstrucciones en el rover o la superficie pueden interferir con el despliegue.
También se agregó una traducción al inglés a su publicación porque tenemos la regla de que todas las publicaciones, fuera de la sección internacional, requieren una traducción porque no todos los navegadores y dispositivos admiten la traducción automática.

[jimmymcgoochie]

Breaking Ground scanning arms need three things- something to scan, some power to scan it and to stay completely still while scanning. Each planet and moon has its own scannable objects- on Kerbin you’ll find baobab trees in many low-lying biomes and giant pink quartz crystals in the mountains, both of which you’ll find just by heading west from KSC, the Mun has two types of impact crater and some rocks, Minmus has various rock types, Duna has ‘blueberries’ and sand dunes, etc. Some of the smaller ones can be sampled by a Kerbal, but the larger objects must be scanned by the rover arm, so here’s how you do it:

• Find something to scan. They’re much easier to find with terrain scatters off as those will add more surface clutter and hide the interesting stuff, and there are some options in the cheats menu to show where they are.
• Drive up to it and park beside it. Those rover arms have a limited reach of just a few metres and will stop scanning if you move even slightly, so park close enough to reach it, but not so close that the arm will hit the object (that will also cause it to stop scanning), and put the brakes on.
• Make sure you have enough battery capacity to do the scan. I think the biggest arm needs around 600 electric charge to run and the smaller versions will be less than that; you’ll probably have that much power anyway but make sure your solar panels are facing the sun as much as possible before starting.
• Right click the scanning arm and click ‘scan’, it will tell you what you’ve found e.g. Mun crater or Baobab tree so the button would say ‘scan Mun crater’ or ‘scan Baobab tree’. The arm will extend, do its scans and then give you the science report like any other experiment does so you can keep it or transmit it.

The small arm only gets you about 1/3 of the total science, the medium arm 2/3 and the large arm all of it; you can come back with a better scanning arm to something you’ve scanned before and get the extra science out of it, e.g. if you’ve scanned a Baobab tree with a small arm then unlock the large arm, you can scan another Baobab tree and get the remaining science out of it.

Some of the smaller surface features like Mun rocks or Duna blueberries can also be picked up by a Kerbal on EVA which will give you the maximum amount of science, but they can’t handle the bigger objects unfortunately- only a scanning arm can do that.

[AlexinTokyo]

It is worth noting that the arms are extremely susceptible to movement of the craft mounting them, and the "Vehicle moved - scan aborted" error can be massively frustrating, especially when you've got full brakes locked hard on every wheel.

For this situation, I recommend the "Parking Brake" mod, which will lock your rover to the ground and prevent all movement.