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Starting with Keithley 2400 & 2600

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Dear All,

I am totally new with LabView as well as with Keithley SMUs.I have Keithley 2400 and 2601, and I want to use these for solar cell characterization (voltage-current cureves & MPPT etc).
Have already tried kicstart and Lab Tracer (provided by Keithley) but none of them works for me as there are too many conditions regarding keithley model & version, operating system and cables (GPIB, RS-232), briefly a hectic and full of confusion route to go on.


So, I want to start learning LabView (is it the right thing to do?) although I have just one month to complete the project.
Please guide me how and where to start from. 

Are there any example programs to start with?

Thanks in anticipation! 

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There are lots of tutorials and examples to get started with.  Labview ships with a lot of examples you can find them by going to help\find examples.  Also if you have an open service agreement then you can do their online tutorials, which are great. Core 1, 2, and 3 may be a good starting point for you.

 

Some other starting points.

 

http://www.ni.com/pdf/manuals/373427j.pdf

 

http://www.ni.com/getting-started/labview-basics/

 

Good luck.



-Matt
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Hi Amjad,

 

A quick search on LabVIEW's 'Instrument Driver Finder' tells me that a driver is available for the Keithley 2400 - I don't have this device so I haven't tried using it, but I would guess that the driver provides a helpful interface. A search for the Keithley 2601 didn't provide a certified NI driver, but a (non-certified) driver is available here.

 

If you have access to the NI online training, such as 'Core 1', 'Core 2' and so on, then you can use those to learn LabVIEW quite comfortably, but if you prefer to just get stuck in, then perhaps using LV's 'Find Examples...' option will suit you better. As to whether you should start with one month, I suppose that depends how much time you can spend learning LabVIEW, and how many other things you need to do in the same time! I would say that LabVIEW is quite straightforward to get some simple things working, but you can certainly make it more complicated when you want to develop things further.

 

The 'Find Examples...' tool is under the Help menu, whilst 'Find Instrument Drivers...' is under both Help and Tools>Instrumentation.

 

 


GCentral
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Accepted by topic author Amjad_F

Hi Amjad,

 

Please guide me how and where to start from. 

So you already found the LabVIEW discussion forum.

Did you notice the "Getting Started" section in the header of this very forum?

 

none of them works for me as there are too many conditions regarding keithley model & version, operating system and cables (GPIB, RS-232), briefly a hectic and full of confusion route to go on.

Ok. Do you think there are less options when using LabVIEW?

Even when the underlying driver is the same (VISA), you still have to know which "cable" (aka communication port) is used. And you still have to know the manual of your device once you want to use senseful settings for your measurement!

 

General hints when using devices working with SCPI commands:

1. Configure your device using its own front panel to be able to do your measurement.

2. Look up the used settings in the device manual to learn about the needed commands.

3. Create your program using those SCPI commands.

Best regards,
GerdW


using LV2016/2019/2021 on Win10/11+cRIO, TestStand2016/2019
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Dear All,
Thanks a lot for your kind guidance.
I am already working on building a command set of SCPI to do the job in time, meanwhile for a long term solution I have started learning LabView basics.  

 

I hope I will be able to do something effective with guidance of you guys.

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Accepted by topic author Amjad_F

@GerdW wrote:

... 

General hints when using devices working with SCPI commands:

1. Configure your device using its own front panel to be able to do your measurement.

...


Pay close attention to what Gerd suggested there.

 

Just last week I was visiting a customer where they had two Keithley 2400's. One was from Keithley and the newer one was made after Tektronics had purchased them.

 

The old one worked with their application and the new one did not.

 

We could make the old one work from the front panel controls but the new one did not!

 

long story greatly shortened...

 

Eventually the customer stumbled across a "compliance" setting that tricked the new one to work. Translated that setting into a SCPI command and then "there was great rejoicing" (Monty Python)

 

If you can not make it work from the front panel it may not be possible using LabVIEW.

 

Ben

Retired Senior Automation Systems Architect with Data Science Automation LabVIEW Champion Knight of NI and Prepper LinkedIn Profile YouTube Channel
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