agilent 3000 series oscilloscope - no communication

[mikel_j]

Hi!

Recently we have bought an Agilent oscilloscope MSOX-3014A (2000 - 3000 series).

PROBLEM : DOESN'T WORK with LabVIEW.

DESCRIPTION : The scope was connected via USB to a PC-computer and was successfully detected by the system and LabVIEW and installed in the system. NI MAX claims that the device is connected and works properly but it doesn't.
After running a sample VI (Acquire Waveform) delivered with the plug-in (project style) driver, the scope is set back to factory setting and after some time the connection is ended and there is no effect (no waveform on screen). After that simple procedure the scope is not responding from the hardware side (no reaction for buttons etc.) The full communication history was captured with NI IO-TRACE and I attach the recorded file.

Tested system configurations

(tested on two different computers with the same result)

LabVIEW 2010 32 bits
LabVIEW 2011 32 and 64 bits
Win 7 Pro x64 (English version)
VISA - the newest

I'm looking forward for your help

thx!

MJ

[shjukheter]

PROBLEM : DOESN'T WORK with LabVIEW.

DESCRIPTION : The scope was connected via USB to a PC-computer and was successfully detected by the system and LabVIEW and installed in the system. NI MAX claims that the device is connected and works properly but it doesn't.
After running a sample VI (Acquire Waveform) delivered with the plug-in (project style) driver, the scope is set back to factory setting and after some time the connection is ended and there is no effect (no waveform on screen). After that simple procedure the scope is not responding from the hardware side (no reaction for buttons etc.) The full communication history was captured with NI IO-TRACE and I attach the recorded file.

                 Post your code that you tried to get graph. You have connected your device via USB. So you have to use functions in Serial palette.

[mikel_j]

Hi!

Thank you for your reply.

In fact I use the VIs and libraries which were added to the sample project, and this project was automatically downloaded from NI site while installing the device drivers. As it is suggested in the manual in case of any problems the user should use the sample VIs, so I use some ready functions prepared by the vendor, which are supposed to work without asking any questions. 

Of course, I can attach the file which I'm trying to run. 

The NI IOTRACE indicates clearly that the there is some "serial traffic", moreover the host computer is able to send a command to reset the scope. I think that there is no problem with choosing  correct protocol, the bug might be in the device. 

THX again

MJ

[Dennis_Knutson]

I don't see anything unusual.

p.s. You can ignore the prior comment about using serial functions. That is completely incorrect.

[Tamas_Szekely]

Dear mikel_j,

I found a forum, which encounter similar issue and they could solve it:

http://forums.ni.com/t5/Instrument-Control-GPIB-Serial/oscilloscope-agilent-MSO-X-3024A-multi-channe...

One of our coleagues (jjp377) posted a link with the updated driver: http://forums.ni.com/ni/attachments/ni/140/47325/1/agilent_2000_3000_x-series.zip

I'm not sure if the forum posted is the actual downloadable, or not: http://sine.ni.com/apps/utf8/niid_web_display.download_page?p_id_guid=9E84674573AF6AB8E0440021287E6A...

The actual release of this driver is 1.0.2. Can you check please, which version do you have installed?

Please download the other forum mentioned driver and after it try to install 1.0.2, hopefully it solves the problem. If it doesn't work still, please let me know.

Best Regards,

Tamas

[mikel_j]

Thank you for your response, as you suggested I have tried the attached driver but without any improvement..... 

I think that before starting this forum discussion I had attempted to use that solution I suppose also with no effects. 

I think there might be some communication protocol problem, as you see I'm able to connect to the device, than the first part of the example code resets the device to factory setting and that blocks the whole system till

I've done a VI which do more or less the same but omits the resetting part of the algorithm - still no results

Thank you again 

[Tamas_Szekely]

Hi!

I browsed the log you sent:

31.  VISA Write ("agilent", ":SYST:ERR?")
Process ID: 0x00001164         Thread ID: 0x0000089C
Start Time: 08:51:39.731       Call Duration 00:00:00.001
Status: 0 (VI_SUCCESS)

> 32.  VISA Read ("agilent", 256)
> Process ID: 0x00001164         Thread ID: 0x0000089C
> Start Time: 08:51:39.732       Call Duration 00:01:10.003
> Status: 0xBFFF0015 (VI_ERROR_TMO)

The first error is a Timeout error of reading the answer from the instrument. The command was something like to ask if error accoured, but the device doesn't asnwer.

I checked the device driver webpage, and it seems like the driver was not tested on this particular type of agilent instrument.

Since I don't have such an instrument to reproduce the issue, I'll ask you to cooperate with testing and I'll ask for help of the instrument driver developers.

Best Regards,

Tamas

[Dennis_Knutson]

What troubleshooting have you done? Have you tried sending the commands in MAX? Have you tried adding a delay after the *RST and/or *CLS before doing the read?

[mikel_j]

Hi, !

The troubleshooting was as following

1.I installed the drivers which you suggested installing.

2. I checked in MAX if the device was correctly connected

3. In MAX I "played" with some basic control commands, and there was no problem with reading the device's signature of reset it etc. (among the vast quantity of commands I used there were all commands which you mentioned before)

4. I browsed the Agilent website looking for some drivers, I found only the IVI driver and installed it - after that I repeated whole testing sequence with no results

thank you again

[Dennis_Knutson]

The error is occuring in the initialize function - specifically when the Reset input is set to True (or left unwired as in the example). Try wiring a false to the input. That help determine whether you need additional time after the reset.