GPIB-USB-HS Sending string on Computer Startup

[deejaybee11]

Hi there, I am using the GPIB-USB-HS to control programmable power supplies. I require the power supplies to stay running in order to maintain stable temperatures of the coils they are powering, and have been facing issues when the computer controlling the supplies restarts with Windows updates, and automatically sets two of the four power supplies to zero output. if this happens over night, or on a weekend, the coils cool down and they take many hours to again reach stable temperatures, holding up our work.

It seems that in Windows 10 you cannot disable updates entirely so I have, to the best of my ability, restricted updates as much as possible however it still can catch us out.

My question is this, can I set the GPIB unit to send a particular message on Windows boot to set the supplies to a predetermined value, or is there a setting I can adjust that disables the GPIB unit initializing everything as zero on startup?

Thanks very much

[cstorey]

First this thread might help your Windows Restart issues - https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/disable-windows-10-automatic-restart-after-upd...

Second, the GPIB-USB-HS cables don't send commands by itself, your software sends commands.  So if you run into an issue where a Windows Update crashes your control program and the PSU are set zero then perhaps that control program could be restarted on reboot. But fixing the root cause of the reboots is probably a simpler solution.

Craig

[deejaybee11]

Thanks very much Craig for your answer. 

I have previously followed these instructions, however it doesn't completely disable the restart. The most you can do is limit when the restart happens.

With regards to the GPIB cable, I was wondering if there was something in the driver that causes it to send a string when the PC starts up and first initializes the connection, as in my understanding the supplies should only change output current if I explicitly send a command to it to do so. Our software that interfaces with them does not automatically start, and I would like to keep it that way as it may be dangerous to have it run automatically unsupervised.

Cheers.