Instrument Control (GPIB, Serial, VISA, IVI)

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NI VISA y drivers

Hi everyone,

 

I want to control a PNA n5242 (Agilent) with Labview, but I want to install LV on the internal PNA computer, but I should not install NI VISA to make PNA's IO Control structure works properly (according to agilent support).

 

My first question is: are there any LV version that automatically install NI VISA (so I can avoid it)?

 

Then, I want to use NI drivers (Keysight PNA Series Analyzer: http://sine.ni.com/apps/utf8/niid_web_display.download_page?p_id_guid=5A30F59F23F63E7AE05400144FF8B5...), but it is said to require NI-VISA 5.4. Will they work with Agilent's VISA?

 

Sorry for my lack of understanding in this matter.

 

Thank in advance!

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Don't do it!!!   I've talked to Keysight about installing additional software on the PNA-X, they HIGHLY recommend against it.  They suggest portable apps on thumb drive if you need to run additional software on it...nothing installed directly.  

 

You are far better off using GPIB or ethernet to control the PNA-X from a remote PC where you can install what you need without the possibility of messing up their internal drivers and code.  An expensive PC is $2k, a cheap PNA-X is worth ~$300k...don't mess with it!

 

I use that driver all the time, it works with LabVIEW 2018 and VISA 18.0.  Its an old driver, but the SCPI commands it uses haven't changed in a decade so it still works fine.

 

Craig

 

PS - If you ignore my advice then at the very least make sure you have a ghost of the PNA-X hard drive before you start.  Getting a new one from them is painful...you send the unit back for service and cal.  

 

 

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Thank you very much for your answer. 

The problem that I have is that I need to speed up my measurements, that's why I would like to eliminate communication time, so an Agilent member suggested that way. But looking for information I found that is a risky process so I want to be sure about what I'm doing.

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What measurements are you doing?  s-parameter sweep 40MHz-40GHz takes ~2s with 401pts, download to PC is another 2s.  Pretty fast when you think about it.

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S11 sweep, 10 points are enough, but with an IFBW of 100 Hz and maybe some avarage. That requires a long time, and I have to repeat the same sweep around 65k times... so I have to economise somehow... that's why I want to get rid of communication delays.

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Do I have a ghost of the PNA hard drive? I mean, if anything goes wrong, System Restore option will be available, won't it? 

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I wouldn't trust system restore.  System restore is just for Windows files, registry and applications.  I don't think it would fix drivers installed or all of the PNA specific software.  Again, I'd be much more careful with the PNA-X.

 

Anyway, even if you did install LabVIEW how do you plan to communicate with the PNA-X while the software runs on the PNA-X?  Typically for an application running on the native PC to talk to other software that requires a server architecture (DDE for example).  I don't think the PNA-X has support for type of communication.  Well it does, Keysight software that controls the PNA, NVNA, etc.. are applications somehow controlling the hardware.  So there's a way to do it, but I've not seen documentation and the standard LabVIEW driver is just VISA and doesn't support internal communications.  You'd need to talk to Keysight and see if there's any way to do it.

 

If I have time tomorrow I'll do a little test to see how fast I can acquire 1000scans of 10pts, 100kHZ IBW.

 

But why do you want to do 65k?!  I'd worry my cal wasn't valid in the amount of time it would take to measure that, let alone save the data.

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Well, I'll save a copy of the PNA-X hard drive then, thanks for the advise.

 

To communicate, I was thinking about employing a internal GPIB that PNA has. Its adress it's supposed to be GPIB2::16::INSTR, so I'd use it in viOpen.vi.

What I'm not very sure about is if NI drivers work with Agilent VISA.

 

I have to measure changes in my DUT, so I have to repeat the measurements lots of times. Why wouldn't you trust the validity of your cal? Because of the enviromental variables like temperature or humidity?

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@karm7

 

To communicate, I was thinking about employing a internal GPIB that PNA has. Its adress it's supposed to be GPIB2::16::INSTR, so I'd use it in viOpen.vi.

What I'm not very sure about is if NI drivers work with Agilent VISA.

Hmm.. isn't that just the internal GPIB controller for talking to (slave) instruments?

 

 

I have to measure changes in my DUT, so I have to repeat the measurements lots of times. Why wouldn't you trust the validity of your cal? Because of the enviromental variables like temperature or humidity?

Yeah, over that long I expect cal errors to creep in unless everything is VERY well controlled. I seem to remember it being +-0.5C for receivers before cal was invalid..but that's secondary to being able to get data.

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You might be interested in reading this.  There's VB running on the PNA-X and you can use that to run macros. 

 

I don't know how the VB macros work, I haven't tried them, but documentation is here - 

 http://na.support.keysight.com/pna/help/latest/Programming/Using_Macros.htm#Setup

 

Here's a suggestion.  You could just setup a 100pt scan, running continuously without averaging, then use a Markers and read the Y value of the marker quite fast.  Rather than having to read and format 20 numbers (10 pairs of mag+phase) every call you would get 1 pair.  Keep reading that one marker 65k times and plot the Marker value vs time.  You could do it either with the VB script on PNA-X or using remote PC and LaBVIEW. 

 

 

But you can learn about PNA-X SCPI commands for markers here - http://na.support.keysight.com/pna/help/latest/Programming/GP-IB_Command_Finder/Calculate/Marker.htm

 

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