HP4142B driver for LabVIEW

[IPeletierR]

Hello everyone!!

I am trying to control a Modular DC Source HP 4142B with labVIEW connected with GPIB. I have spent some time looking for drivers for it but there is none. Also trying to communicate with it via NI-488.2 with no result. There are some old posts talking about this 5 years ago but none of them end up giving any solution.

I would like to know if anyone has ever done this, if it is posible to do and if you could help me up. I am a 4th year student in EECS degree. I am new to labVIEW, I have been able to control an Agilent E3631A but it came with the drivers and it was fairly easy.

I would really appreciate some help here.

Thank you!!

Ignacio Peletier

[Vincent90]

Hi,

My advice to you is to get the programming manual of HP4142B and develop the driver yourself if you can't find it anywhere else.

Usually instrument using SCPI Commands make the driver developpement faster, otherwise you will have to search for instrument registers.

Good luck,

Vincent

[PalanivelThiruvenkadam]

You can check with the manufacturer regarding driver support, In case of unavaliability of inbuilt drivers they should be able to provide the method for remote commununication or the detailed document on the same.

[IPeletierR]

Hello again, 

I have been able to control the HP 4142B with LabVIEW. If anyone is interested, do not doubt and contact me via email: ignacio@peletier.com

Best regards,

Ignacio Peletier

[dickyoung_rfguy]

I have just (over the past 2 days) been experimenting with an old HP4142B as well. Using primitive VISA Read and VISA Write blocks (always using the EOL constant after each command), I was able to quickly verify that it would respond to most of the query type commands (e.g. *IDN?), but could not get it to turn on a source module and supply current.

It appears that in the old HP4142B manual, the syntax of where the characters, commas and spaces go doesn't produce results. So when I tried to follow that manual and sent "DV2 0, 10.0, 500E-3", it did not force the voltage. However, when I then looked at the E5270B programming manual, I saw the DV command configured differently, and when I instead tried, "DV 2,0,10.0,500E-3", that works as intended.

This was with LV2017 - 64Bit, and all I want to use the HP4142B for is Spot measurements. In this particular case, it does indeed appear that building my own set of VIs from primitive VISA blocks will work. I just need to use the E5270B manual as the guide for syntax!