Signal Generators

[holtonma]

Does somebody know the syntax that is needed to write such a waveform? I am writing the following commands to VISA with a concatenated text string:
TRACEATA EMEMORY,#44000TRACE:COPY USER2,EMEMORY

No error occurs when I send this to the AFG320, however, it is NOT stored in the AFG320's memory, and does not load. The Tektronics Tech support was unable to help.
Any comments would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

[Ryan M]

Are you able to verify communication with the instrument with a simple command such as "*IDN?"? If you verify that the GPIB controller is able to send and retrieve data from the instrument, I might suggest contacting Sony/Tektronics for documentation on this instrument for syntax and operation. If you are unable to get *IDN? to work from IBIC, there may be a larger scale problem with the instrument which you may need to address.

[holtonma]

Thanks for your reply.
Yes, I am communicating with the instrument (and 8 others) on the bus. I can command the instrument to produce the waveforms currently programmed into the box using the driver downloaded from the Tek website. However, there is a syntax problem in sending a waveform to the instrument, that has not been resolved. (I'm talking about the TRACEATA commands where "" is a concatenated string of unsigned two bit integers that were converted into a string. The tech support at Tektronics hasn't been able to add any guidance, other than two people telling me, "it sounds like you are sending it the correct syntax", and another Tek representative saying, "yeah, there are errors in this manual--it's not the greatest!"...It's a simple
program (besides their syntax) that I have emailed to them also, and they haven't responded.

For anyone who encounters this problem, I did get it working, using the command which replaces points into the waveform (forget the exact syntax--it's something like "VALUEATA ,". (I'm at home going from my memory--don't have the manual handy) I put this in a big loop of however many points you want to create, then copied it to the "USER2" block in memory. It works but is not as optimum as the first method should be (except it doesn't work!). So follow this command's instructions in the manual, and program it in a loop to change the value of whatever is in USERx memory, and it will work. Takes about 1 minute for every 1000 points in the waveform you are trying to create (16,384 points maximum in the AFG320)

Anyway, thanks again for your reply, and good luck to anyone that needs to do this!

[Dr Sparks]

Have you lproduced an instrument driver for the AFG320 successfully?  I just inherited one and I could use such a driver.  I look forward to getting out of having to develop such a driver.

Larry Levit

[Rimasaurus]

Hi Larry,

Welcome to the NI Forums!  National Instruments provides an instrument driver for the Sony/Tektronix AFG 320 on the Instrument Driver Network.  I hope this helps.  Good luck!

Regards,

Rima

[easyrider]

Hi Rima

 I am trying to download the drivers for AFG 310. The one at the website that you mentioned is an installer and not actual VI files? I am using LABview 8.5. May be I am not phrasing the question properly but the drivers for other instruments have example VIs which can be modified to suit the experiment. I did not find anything like that here.

Could you help me with this, please?

Saurabh

[Dennis_Knutson]

duplicate post