Agilent 89601A labview drivers

[Costa K]

Do anyone have an Agilent 89601A labview driver?

Or do you know where I can get one from?  

[Roland A.]

Hello Costa:

Thank you for contacting National Instruments. Normally you can find drivers here. However this driver, does not seem to be there. I would suggest using GPIB or VISA commands depending on the instrument.

[Dennis_Knutson]

As was discussed earlier in this post, the 89601 is not an instrument. It is a program that intefaces to a variety of Agilent instruments. Think of it as Agilents version of a VI. There are drivers available for the instruments that the 89601 program controls so the functionality of the 89601 can be duplicated or you can use the ActiveX methods and properties mentioned to control the Agilent program.

[Sparky]

For those developing active X calls, the COM help file (for the 6.31) release dosen't link properly.  I haven't tried the new 7.x verison they sent me.  Anyways, the file you want is on the cd or install depending on how you selected the help file installation.  I believe the file name is:
com_89601.chm

You can create a shortcut on the desktop right to this file and windows will know how to open it.  It is pretty accurate and helpful for describing all the properties/fields for the functions you can access. 

One annoying feature is that while the 89600 displays RF power in dBm, active X calls to these measurements only report it in VRMS squared. Lovely.

[Intasar]

I am trying to communicate over a LAN connect to the 89600 VSA software (7.1) based on the Agilent 16903A Logic Analyser. I run the TestConnect.bat provided by agilent to check the DCOM connection and that reports the connection is succesful. I try to run the Labview example program provided by Agilent (see attached) but that just reports back a measurement timeout error after a couple of minutes, and I don't see any effect of the program on the remote screen. The Labview program provided for the Logic Analyser 16903A to run across a LAN connection worked fine. I tried the check version program attached earlier in this thread but that just reported the version on the PC and not the remote 89600.

I have not used COM, activeX until now. If anyone could me a few pointers as to what i should check, it would be much appreciated.

[Doug]

It looks like I'm in the same boat as the rest of you.  I'm developing a test using the Agilent 89601 software on an MXA spectrum analyzer and am in dire need of drivers.  Does anyone have drivers they're willing to share?

Thanks,

Doug

[Sparky]

I just tried submitting my library, we'll see if it pops up in the list.  Hope I did it right.

[NathanT]

A set of VIs that interacts with the 89601A software would be more appropriate as Example Code than an instrument driver.  If you are interested in just controlling your ESA or PSA series instruments, we already have both LV PNP and IVI drivers available, and the MXA LV PNP driver is on the horizon.

Sparky,
      It would probably be worthwhile to attach your example code to your next post for those users that are in urgent need of a way to programmatically control the 89601 software.

Cheers,

NathanT

[Sparky]

Unfortunately when using the activeX calls, at least with the graphical interface and VISA, it is very difficult to create a driver library.  Basically you plunk down a visa reference node (ring/menu bar) set to the 89600 app, then you can create property nodes that let you 'open' a references to sub functions, or read/write properties.  It is difficult to map on screen functions to these reference openings.  You can get these references by using the macro record option in the 89600.  Start with the 89600 in some default mode, then start a record, and setup the insturment to take the measurements.  This lets you see what calls are done and how the data is pushed to the settings.  You see the call downs you need to do to create a VI that lets you push the same settings.  Reading back data however is very tricky and the macro record trick won't help you decipher the options and settings of the property nodes for any particular meter/display.

Here are two particular VI’s that show this issue.  The COM help file does a good job of describing what the read request will provide you with.  Remember that this help file is present on the CD/install directory but the general help file doesn’t link properly to it.  (The file is: com_89601.chm and you can double click/open it, windows will open the help file reader correctly.)

[Doug]

Hi Sparky,

Looks like your upload didn't stick.  Any chance you can zip everything up and just attach it to a Reply?

Thanks again,

Doug