How to hook up and control multiple (HP8133A) pulse generators?

[jjlee]

I am trying to hook up a few pulse generators(HP8133A) using GPIB cables. Fortunately, I was able to find the instrument driver from NI.com. Does anyone have an experience how to control/set multiple equipments with one front panel VI (rather than multiple VIs)? (e.g.,amplitude, frequency) (Even using the "HP8133A Getting started 2"example should be extremely helpful!<---please see the attached file) Your kind help would be greatly appreciated.

[Joe_H]

what you will have to do is give each instrument a diiferent address. See owners manual for this and then adjust your code accordingly

instrument 1 = GPIB::0
instrument 2 = GPIB::1

you can do this up to 16 instruments.
There are also some good shipping examples for using GPIB

Hope this helps

Joe

[Brian_Powell]

I'm not entirely clear what it is you want to do. Do you want one front panel to control all the generators in the same way all at once? Or are you just wondering how you can specify which instrument each instrument driver VI should talk to?

If it's the latter, you just call Initialize multiple times with a different "Instr Descriptor" for each pulse generator. Each resulting VISA session corresponds to a different instrument.

If you want the former, then you have to do things yourself; there's no built-in way to get VISA calls to do things to multiple devices. Basically, you'll wrap every one of your instrument driver VIs with a wrapper that takes an array of VISA sessions and loops through executing the instrument driver calls on each VISA sessi
on. Note that there will be a latency; the instruments will not be sent the same commands exactly at once. (That is a much more complicated problem to solve.)

Anyway, perhaps these help you, or maybe you can clarify what it is you want to do.

Brian

[jjlee]

I am trying to hook up 2 pulse generators(PGs) using the example VI (included in the instrument driver) by cascading errors between two generators. (Please see the attached file.) Obviously, the objective here is to control two PGs with one front panel VI.

Although there is no error reported, the front panel VI does not run. Could you please advise/comment to solve this problem?

Thanks in advance!

JJLEE

[Brian_Powell]

I think I understand. You don't need to have two different Initialize functions; you can just place the regular Initialize function on your diagram once.

To one Initialize, you wire one address, e.g., "GPIB0::13::INSTR", and to the other, you wire the other address, e.g., wire "GPIB0::19::INSTR".

Brian

[jjlee]

I have just tried to add the second input(GPIB Addrs:19) to the string palette. And I have noticed that the "error out" message reading "Old VISA Open in HP8133A Initialize.vi->HP8133A Getting Started2_trial.vi"

I thought that I was following your advice, but I guess I am missing a link here.
Could you please help to solve this problem?

Thanks,
JJ

[Brian_Powell]

The VI you attached doesn't seem right. You only have one Initialize function, and you are not wiring the correct string into it. It looks like you're trying to wire "GPIB::13 19", which is not valid.

You need to have two different sets of Instrument Driver VIs. Duplicate the three icons you have.

Into one Initialize function, wire "GPIB0::19::INSTR". Into the other Initialize function, wire "GPIB0::13::INSTR".

Brian