Change Agilent 34970A Driver from EIA-232 to GPIB

[CelerityEDS]

I am looking to change a driver found on NI idnet. The Agilent 34970A has interfaces for EIA-232 and GPIB (and ths family has options for ethernet and USB) but the only driver uses EIA-232. The application calls for the GPIB interface since the PC used will have its EIA-232 port in use.

Is it possible to change the VISA driver to the different interface, or am I forced to use a EIA-232 converter to get this running?

I am having the exact some issue with the APT 6010 power supply.

Any assistance is greatly appreciated.

[GovBob]

I'm confused about your question. The driver located here says it supports 488.2 (GPIB). I would suggest using the project style if you are using LabVIEW.

[CelerityEDS]

Within the sample VI Agilent 34970 Switch.vi there is a sub-VI named "Agilent 34970.lvlib:Initialize.vi" with a serial port interface, not GPIB. Is the initialize sub-VI not required for GPIB applications; do I not connect a serial port congifuration to it to make it GPIB?

I guess it comes down to insufficient knowledge of VISA, but what I've read shows that it makes the interface transparent to the parent VI... Or am I incorrect?

Right now, I can easily base my VI from the example VI, only if I make it initialize with GPIB...

Let me know if I need to be more specific.

[GovBob]

Are you using a NI GPIB card? If you are open up Measurement and Automation Explorer (MAX). On the left pane open Devices and Interfaces tree and select GPIB. With your Agilent on depress the search for instruments on the the top tool bar in MAX. The instrument should show up at the bottom pane.

 In the LabVIEW vi just click the down arrow on the Visa Session control and select the correct GPIB address.

 If you are not using a NI GPIB card you will have to enter the address by hand into the VISA Session control. (e.g. GPIB0::x::INSTR or similar). This is all assuming you are using LabVIEW.

 VISA was created so that you wouldn't need to worry about the transport buss as much.

[SunshineDesign]

If you hook the computer to the device with the other interface and MAX recognizes the instrument, you should be able to just change the VISA Handle input to the other recognized input and it should work. This assumes no fixed code for the Serial Port Initialization is hard coded into the driver. If that is the case you will have to adjust the code to make it the generic Visa initialize and not the Visa Serial initialize/setup. I coded for a Rodhe and Schwarz Spec An using GPIB and ported over to TCP/IP network control only changing the instrument handle. I had no issues with the change in interface, VISA took care of everything.

[Dennis_Knutson]

The question makes no sense. The RS-232 control is used only when the VISA reference is a serial port. If you specify a GPIB reference that is what the driver will use. Look at the block diagram.

[Kapur]

GovBob and SunshineDesign explained it well. VISA is a high-level API that calls low-level drivers. Unless you aretrying to reduce the test time at this stage, my suggestion is to use VISA when programming for instrument control in LabVIEW. Instrument interface like Serial, GPIB, and Ethernet use this VISA API. GPIB has data transfer rate 1Mbyte/s. I have not seen Serial being used unless we you musttransfer data over long distances. If you decided to use Serial, I would use parity bit for error checking.

[Dennis_Knutson]

Old thread and your answer is not really related since the driver does use VISA and the driver does support either GPIB or serial or USB or.Ethernet.