Talk to me about Dopplers

Mrs&Dr2b

So my DH acquired a doppler for us through a friend. It is a low power handheld 3mhz. Our friend said that it would not reliably detect the heartbeat until about 14-16 weeks as it was a very low power. Shockingly, we tried to find it yetsterday at 10w4d and didn't find anything. It would occassionally have a reading of between 170-180 on the screen but we couldn't actually hear the babies heartbeat. has anyone else had trouble finding the LO's heartrate on the doppler? I am know it is just too small and low power and I go to the dr in 10 days to hear it with their doppler. We tried positioning at or just above my pelvic bone, higher, pressing in harder, moving it around and nothing.