Thorlabs ITC510 is not listed

[Goju-Ryu]

Hello!

I've got a problem with my Thorlabs ITC510. It's not being listed in my MAX. It's well connected and turned on. What can be the problem? Any suggestions?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance!

[Dennis_Knutson]

Connected how? GPIB, serial, something else?

[Goju-Ryu]

Sorry, my post was too short 😉

I'm connecting it using a GPIB-USB-HS cable, my Visa version is 3.2 and MAX is 3.1.1, Labview is 7.1 (student version)

[Dennis_Knutson]

Do you have any other instruments connected and if so, do they show up after a scan? If they do show up, then I would first try connecting tge ITC510 by itself. If you don't have any other instruments connected, do you have one that you can test to see whether it's the GPIB-USB-HS.

I'm not familiar with the ITC510 but other things to check is to see what the address is set to on the instrument. Make sure it's not set to 0. Also, with some instruments you have to actually enable the GPIB from an instrument menu.

[Goju-Ryu]

The problem is not from the GPIB-USB-HS cable as it works with other devices.

The GPIB address is set to "10" through a DIP switch in the rear panel of the system and no other device connected to my computer uses the same address.

I already connected only the ITC510 to the computer and the result is the same 😞

[Dennis_Knutson]

I just want to make sure that the instrument does not show up at all in MAX and that it just doesn't fail the *IDN? query. If there is no detection at all, I would suspect the instrument. Have you tried contacting Thorlabs technical support?

[Goju-Ryu]

From all the times I've tried to scan for new instruments, only once it detected a device connected, but even then it failed the *IDN? request.

In that time MAX detected that the device address is 10.
But I never succeeded again in detecting the connected system ITC510 😞

I already contacted Thorlabs technical support and I'm waiting for an answer

[Dennis_Knutson]

I found this post where someone else was also having problems with a Thorlabs instrument and the GPIB-USB-HS. You could got to MAX and right click on the GPIB controller and select properties. The advanced tab has a setting for bus timing that you might want to experiment with. The fact that the instrument does not repsond to *IDN? means it is not a 488.2 compliant instrument. Since 488.2 was approved in 1987, your instrument was designed for a very obsolete specification.

[Goju-Ryu]

The ITC510 is not obsolete, it's very recent.
In its manual it says that its interface is based on the IEEE-488.2 standard, so it should be able to respond to an *IDN? request.

Experimenting with the bus timing did not give me better results 😞

I don't remember anything more that could be wrong... Any help?

[Dennis_Knutson]

The only other idea would be to turn on NI-Spy before doing the scan for instrument.