PXI-8186 as GPIB-PXI bridge

[The Photon]

I have a PXI instrument that I'd like to control using an external PC.

I realize that I should ideally use an MXI-4 controller as the PXI bus master to do this, but we've

already bought a PXI-8186 embedded controller for this system. Is it possible for the PXI-8186 to

serve as a GPIB-PXI bridge?

Thanks, 

Matt

[David_Pratt]

Hey Photon,

As for an exact replacement for a PXI-MXI card, an embedded controller cannot function like that.   Your best bet will be to use remote desktop on your desktop computer to log into and control your PXI embedded controller.  Is this a viable option for you or are there network limitations?

[The Photon]

Hi David,

I don't just want a manual user interface, I would be okay using the embedded PC for that.

I want to send command from a test program (C + VISA) running on the other computer.

I don't necessarily need all the features of MXI, for example I don't need to send remote triggers.

I just need to send commands and queries. 

On the other hand, I think my instrument doesn't have a (documented) SCPI interface, or even

a register-based interface.  The only documented interfaces are an IVI driver, a "Matlab API" (probably means bindings to the

IVI functions), and a manual GUI (presumably built on top of IVI). I don't know if the IVI driver might expect

some features to be present that I won't use directly.

In case it matters, the instrument in question is an Agilent Technologies N6031A arbitrary waveform generator.

Thanks for your help,

Matt

[David_Pratt · Accepted solution]

Hey Photon,

If you're sending GPIB commands and queries from your PC to the controller via your own software, we just need to configure the controller as a listener.  If LabVIEW is installed on the controller, you can try to run our shipping example under Hardware Input and Output>>GPIB>>LabVIEW-GPIB.vi and configure that to listen on the port.  As long as you can read the signals on that GPIB port, you can parse those messages into the information you need to send to your Agilent PXI device.  In short it’s possible to do it, but would require some data manipulation in the controller to get the GPIB data to the Agilent device.  Are you able to control the device fine with the embedded controller?  Can you successfully achieve GPIB communication between the PC and controller?

Thanks,

Message Edited by David P. on 12-11-2008 03:08 PM

[The Photon]

Hi David,

Thanks for the answer. If it comes to that I will probably just make the embedded controller the controller for the whole system.

But thanks for confirming that's what I'll have to do.

Matt

[David_Pratt]

Hey Matt,

Thanks for the inquiry. If you have any more questions or have any issues that arise making your embedded controller the main controller, please post back to the appropriate forum.  Have a good day!

Message Edited by David P. on 12-11-2008 03:26 PM