I need an instrument driver for Neocera LTC-21 Temperature Controller and am having problems sending the IDN? string to the same instrument.

[Kunal]

Hi,
When I use the instrument wizard in LabVIEW 5.0, to indentify a device (Neocera LTC-21 Temperature Controller), I receieve the following error:

Error.
There was an error sending this string.
VISA error code returned was:

-1073807339

Error -1073807339 occured at VISA Read.

Possible reasons:
VISA: (Hex 0xBFFF0015) Timeout expired before operation completed.

Although, the manual for this instrument states that the response should be a string of characters in the form of "Neocera Model LTC-21 version".
Also, I do not have a driver for this instrument, inspite of checking on the NI Instrument
Divers Network and the company website(www.Neocera.com).
I would truely appreciate if someone can help me.
Thanks,
Kunal.

[codeman]

I could not find any drivers for that instrument. You may just have to make your own. As for getting the device to respond, there are a couple of things you can do. If you are using GPIB: First, you might want to just reset the device by turning it on and off. If there are other instruments on the same bus, make sure 2/3 of them have their power on. Try communicating with it through IBIC. Here is a page that will help.

http://www.ni.com/support/gpib/max/ibic.htm

IBIC communicates with the GPIB on a very base driver level and you set everything manually step by step, so you can see where the break down is. Also make sure you are entering the "*IDN?" and all other commands correctly. Check the device manual to see what commands it should respond to and if there ar
e any special settings you might need. If you are doing serial communication, you may want to check to see if you need a null modem cable for it to function. There also may be a dip switch on the device that switches between serial and GPIB communication.

[Dan_Mondrik]

Kunal:

Another possibility is to try "*IDN?\n" instead of just "*IDN?". Although this should not make a big difference, I have seen this in 1 or 2 devices.

Dan Mondrik
Senior Software Engineer, NI-VISA
National Instruments

[Shuliang ZHOU]

Try to find it in:
http://www.americanmagnetics.com/

[fanmingyu212]

I know it is 15 years later... But I would still like to give some information who may need it. The IDN string for LTC-21 is *IDN?;\n. For all commands, there are a ";" at the end of the command. You can find the manual at http://www.astro.caltech.edu/~sharc/technical/LTC-21%20manual.pdf.