Agilent OSA-Controlling using Labview 8.5

[ginurajan]

I am using LabView 8.5 to control Agilent 86410B spectrum analyzer. I have NI Visa 4.4.1 and all the drivers for the spectrum analyzer also installed. But I am getting an error in the "start sweep" module of the instrument driver, saying that "the session is invalid". I have tried many options by chaging the VISA drivers etc. Still the same. Since the device drivers were written in older labview version, I have opened those in 7.1, to make it compatible with 8.5. Any sugegstions to solve this problem will be a great help.

[Ever_Song]

Hi ginurajan,

First, I have a few questions about your setup:

1) Does it work in LabVIEW 7.1 using the NI-VISA 4.4.1 but not in LabVIEW 8.5?

2) What Agilent driver are you using?

3) How is the spectrum analyzer connected? GPIB?

4) What version of Windows are you using?

Also, let’s try to narrow down the issue by trying to communicate with the instrument using basic VISA commands (in LabVIEW 8.5) to see if we can communicate to the device without the drivers. If we can, then we need to dig into the driver and figure out what is throwing the error. Finally, it looks like the driver is supported by Agilent, so it might be worth giving them a call to see what sort of LabVIEW compatibility the driver has.

[Dennis_Knutson]

'Session invalid' sounds like an error from an IVI driver. Can you post the link? Are you first calling the initialize function and passing the reference from that? Are you using the IVI session name from MAX?

[ginurajan]

Thanks Dennis.

I have attached a screen short of the vi and the error message from the "Download Trace vi". Yes. I use the initialize vi first and all the sessions are passed from that. The program works and all other modules work perfectly except the download trace and hence I am not able to download the data. The vi controls the OSA except download data. I dont know what I am doing wrong. I have used this program previsouly with another computer and OSA. The only difference now, is that I am using a USB GPIB. But again, here I am confused, if all the other subvis and lib vis are working, why just one is not working. If you see any wrong doing please suggest a solution.

Other specs of what I am using

LabView 8.0, XP (Assuming come version incompatability, I moved back to version 8.0, which I am sure that it works). Agilent 8614x drivers.