Anyone recommend a good document or book for GPIB basics using C# and Measurement Studios?

[MrMike]

All the posts I have read seem a bit high level and assume some basic knowledge of how GPIB works.  I hadn't even heard of it until a few weeks ago and now need to learn to access numerious different devices.  I'd love to find a good book, or pdf document, that describes this protocol very well.  I would be nice if it used C# and the measurement studios tools in it's examples. 

Does anyone know of such a book or document?  Or even some very well documented code examples may be enough if they are generic enough to piece together my own "GPIB hello world".

Thanks,
Mike

[Nick_D]

Hey MrMike,

I hope these articles help:

http://zone.ni.com/devzone/cda/tut/p/id/3388

http://zone.ni.com/devzone/cda/tut/p/id/3419

http://zone.ni.com/devzone/cda/tut/p/id/2761

http://zone.ni.com/reference/en-XX/help/371361B-01/lvmeasconcepts/gpib_communications/

With these articles, if you just follow the related links in them, you should be able to get more than enough information.

A good place to get start is if you have a GPIB instrument. Open labVIEW, go to Help->Find Examples...->Search for GPIB->Open "LabVIEW<->GPIB.vi" This is the closest thing to a "Hello World" example for GPIB.

Regards,

Nick D.

[Nick_D]

Hey,

I forgot to mention where the text based programs are found. If you're interested in labVIEW It wouldn't be a bad thing to try and download the evaluation version at www.ni.com/downloads.

But here's the examples for the other drivers.

Message Edited by Nick D on 08-16-2007 04:46 PM

[JonathanN]

HI MrMike,

Nick posted the C++ example locations but I see you are using C#. Thus take a look at the NI-DAQmx, NI-VISA and NI-488.2 .NET Example Locations KnowledgeBase for .NET example locations.

Best Regards,

[MrMike]

Thanks for all the info.  I had actually already done the Lab View example and that was a good start but didn't real tell what was happening in the background like some good code would.  I'm working through many of the documents that were attached now and came to a few questions.

When using MAX, should the "Scan for Instruments" return a device specific to my GPIB device?  It says no instruments found, though I have a GPIB-USB-B cable attached to an Agilent 33250A Function Generator.  Are these tools all specific to NI GPIB devices, or should I be able to use all my Agilent devices (since that's all I currently have)? 

Also, how do I find the secondary address of my devices?  I can't any mention of it in my manuals.  None even refer to a primary address, but just call it the address.

Also, the documents said that VISA is an abstraction to GPIB, and some other protocols, do you recommend starting with VISA or some other API.  I'd like to avoid doing much in Lab View since I'm not very familiar with it, and it seems to hide some of the details or at least the example does.

Thanks again for your time,

Mike

[Nick_D]

If you're interested on what's going on behind the scenes, I would recommend using NI-SPY. If you go to Start->Programs->National Instruments->NI-SPY. This is a utility that monitors all the driver calls being made. So if you wanted, you could run any example that uses NI's drivers, and this will show all the low levels calls being made, and if you were to emulate what the driver calls were being made, then it should work the same.

Regards,

Nick D.