Hp 4192 a instrument driver doesnt have a frequency output

[Srik]

Hello friends

I am using Hp 4192 A impedance analayzer and I am using the drivers given in the Ni website. I am able to control the instrument with it ,but as the instrument driver has only two outputs for display A and display B i am not able to record the corresponding frequency measurements (which is the 3rd display) . Also with the same vi (the one which i wrote) it sometimes sweeps slowly , sometimes does it quickly but the sweep doesnt restart at 1000 kHz(sweep is supposed to be in loop), and sometimes it works perfectly.Its driving me nuts.

Please help me as my research needs measuements from impedance analyzer.

Thanks

[billko]

The only thing I can recommend is getting into the guts of the manuals and figuring out how the instrument works, then writing custom drivers to make it jump through the hoops you need it to.  It sounds tricky, but it's really straightforward - send a command, get the results, if you're expecting any.  Let us know how you are doing!

Bill

[Srik]

Thanks for the reply Bill.

I really dont know how to do it without labview.Ive contacted agilent and they say they dont have a driver for this equipment and they are not providing support for this anymore. Here is my problem

I want to control the instrument so that it does a frequency sweep and record the capacitance values and frequency values in an excel file .This process should  continuously repeat itself  for 70 minutes (so 70 sweeps ).

So can you please tell me how to get started without an instrument driver. Which program should I use and what programming language should I use, what are these commands, where should I type them in or how to execute these commands.

Links to tutorials will also appreciated .

Waiting for your reply

[billko]

This shows the nuts and bolts of every driver for every instrument out there.  This is a query, which means you are expecting an answer.  Some commands just tell the equipment to do something, so you don't need the VISA read part of it.

This picture is intended only to show you how nice and clean it could be to make your own drivers in LabVIEW.  I highly recommend reading some sort of LabVIEW for Dummies kind of book AT LEAST.  That will show you how to do basic stuff in LabVIEW.  And of course, read the equipment manuals.  If you know how to use the instrument, you can concentrate on the programmer's guide.  If you don't know how to use the instrument... whew - usually HP/Agilent manuals are several hundred pages of boring reading, but they are very thorough about how to perform measurements!  After that, you are ready to ask questions here!

In fact, poke around your instrument's programmer's guide to see just what I told it to do.  If you can figure it out, then you are starting to understand the programming flow and it will be no time before you are writing your own stuff.

Good luck!

Bill

[Srik]

Thanks for the info Bill, Ill get started right away

[billko]

Remember to come back with any questions you might have!  Good luck!  🙂