Timing / buffering problems

[Khume]

Hi, I am trying to operate the SRS SR400 photon counter using LabView. I have an optical chopper as the external trigger and I am using both channels A and B in a gated way. Basically I can get the photon counter to operate perfectly, but if I collect only one data point at a time in Labview, the data displayed is that recorded on the photon counter 7 counts previously. If I ask LabView to record say ten counts, I generally get 9 of the same number repeated (the same number which appeared on the SR400 7 counts previously) and the a random 0 or 6. I am using a new NI USB-GPIB card to interface the PC and SR400. I am sure the problem lies in some buffering or handhsaking issue, but I'm relatively new to LabView and can't figure it out. Any help will be greatly appreciated! The code I'm using is attached
 

	AllThatStuff.vi (76 kb)
	SR400 Read_e2.vi (130 kb)

[MXI Master]

Khume,

You are not the first to report problems with this driver, but since it was not written by NI and I don't have the hardware there is not much I can do to help. But, here are some other forums with similar issues. I would read through these forums and see if you get any good ideas, you also try asking about this in one of these threads, maybe one of these users still monitors them.

http://search.ni.com/nisearch/main/p/sb/navsRel?q=sr400&x=25&y=7

[Khume]

Thanks for that link, I gather from that that it is not the USB part of the GPIB that is the problem, so no point in putting a GPIB PCI card in, I'll just have to work through some of the suggestions, cheers!

[efcloos]

HI MXIMaster,

The link you had previously posted is no longer active and I am having the same problem as Khlume. What did discussions did you refer to?

Thanks

[Tortu]

Greetings efcloos

I don't know which discussions Khlume was referred to. However, I looked for the driver in the NI website and noticed that it is not NI certified. Which means the driver is probably incomplete and hasn’t been tested. So what I did is find some discussions related to the driver:

https://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW/SR400-change-from-GPIB-to-serial-RS232/td-p/2474706

https://forums.ni.com/t5/Counter-Timer/SR-400-gated-photon-counter/td-p/519716

https://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW/Serious-bugs-in-the-SR400-gated-photon-counter-LabVIEW-drivers/td-p...

But also I will give you these links, which I believe will be more helpful to you.

https://www.ni.com/en/support/downloads/instrument-drivers/tools-resources/developing-labview-plug-a...

https://www.ni.com/docs/en-US/bundle/labview/page/instrument-driver-modification-instructions.html

Write back if you have additional questions.

Regards.