experimental system design

[alpha1gWK]

Hii..

I am trying to design an experimental system, which looks something like this:

I need to control (read and write) 7 power supplies. Most of the powersupplies that I saw had GPIB but not USB ports. So I have a couple of quesions

a)Are there any power supplies(0-200V) which can be controlled using USB cables/ports

b)The GPIB-USB cables(Red in the above picture) that I am talking about are something similar to https://www.ni.com/en-us/shop/model/gpib-usb-hs.html

They are quite expensive a piece ~ 500$. So is there any other cheaper way to connect the signals from the powersupplies to the LabView Program/Computer.

c)If I merge all the signals into 1 USB connection, can they be recognized and controled via LabView?

I am very new to such instrument control. Thanks for any suggesions.

Paul

[Albert.Geven]

there are also powersupplies that have a serial connection and usb to serial is much cheaper.

About 30 Euro's a piece but please try a given system out before you buy more cables.

Not all serial to usb cables have the same quality. We use FTDI based cables and they work ok.

[GovBob]

If you are still looking at using GPIB you only need one USB to GPIB converter. No usb hub would be needed. Each GPIB cable would piggy back off of the others. Each instrument would have it's own distinct GPIB address. See the tutorial.

Hope this helps and happy new year.

[SunshineDesign]

Xantrax or now Sorenson has a line of power supplies that are USB (pseudo serial) controlled. The USB to GPIB is expensive, and so are the GPIB cables if purchased new. You can usually pick up GPIB cables cheap used, just check them out prior to using them.