sloarton 1260 to labview

[rutgers]

I am trying to get the Solartron 1260 Impedance analyzer  to talk to my computer using LabView. I downloaded the drivers from NI site but the sample Vi's inside also don't seem to be working. When i try to 'scan for instruments' in the Measurement & Automation Explorer for GPIB connections there is a beep from the device  but the status is shown as not responding. Does anybody know what specific settings you have to set the 1260  to make it communicate with LabView? I am new at labview so any help will be appreciated.

[Brian F.]

Hello. 

Thanks for posting to the NI Discussion Forums. 

I have a few questions for you that should help us make some progress on this issue.  First, which Solartron Driver are you using?  There are 3 drivers listed at the following website:

Solartron 1260

http://sine.ni.com/apps/utf8/niid_web_display.model_page?p_model_id=866

Knowing which driver you are using will help us get on the same page.  Secondly, you state that in MAX, you scan for instruments.  After you scan, is there an instrument that is detected and it's status is not responding?  Or, are you unsuccessful in detecting the instrument at all?  Additionally, do you know if this instrument is SCPI compliant?  This can usually be found in the user's manual.  A good test would be to use the test panels in MAX to query *IDN? and see what is returned.  After we get the board working in MAX, then we can move to the next step, which is LabVIEW. 

You state that the example isn't working in LabVIEW.  Have you determined this because of an error being thrown or is there some other type of unexpected behavior?  If there is an error,  what is the error code? 

Let us know and we will be happy to help you further!

Brian F
Applications Engineer

National Instruments

[rutgers]

Hi Brian

Thanks for the help. Answers to your questions

1. I am using version 2. of the driver.

2. I am not sure whether the instrument is detected as its status is that of not responding. I am attaching a screenshot of MAX which may be more informative.

3. I do not have the manual for the device but i talked to the technical support office of solartron and they didnt know wht is SCPI....so i dont think it is SCPI compliant but i am still researching on that.

When i query IDN? i get the following reply" ENOL indicates that no instrument was detected at the specified address.  Verify that your instrument is powered on and properly connected to your GPIB interface."

4. Regarding example VI in labview when i try to run the vi it doesnt show any error screen, it just remains the same.

Hope i have answered your quesstions and you can now help me better.

Abhishek 

[Dennis_Knutson]

According to the code that is in the driver, the instrument should respond to the *IDN? query. Neither one of the instruments you have connected will and that's a little strange. What is the other instrument you have on the bus? Have you tried connecting only one?

The LabVIEW driver is not supposed to show an error screen. You do have an error indicator on the front panel that should show something but there is no point running the LabVIEW code until the instrument can be detected by MAX.

Also, the driver you downloaded needs a modification to the Initialize VI. Inside, there is a 'Old VISA Open' function. this should be replaced with the VISA Open funciton on the VISA Advanced palette. This will result in some broken wires but they can be easily fixed. That's a bit down the road however. The first step has to be understanding why the IDN fails.

p.s. The instrument command set is not SCPI (Standard Commands for Progammable Instruments). The fact that the tech suport does not know what SCPI is would not inspire confidence in me.

[rutgers]

Hi Dennis

Firstly, i just connected one instrument-solartron- to the GPIB at a time. Even i do not know why it is showing two instruments. I am looking the 'open visa' thing but as you said if it doesnt work at the MAx level then it can't work in labview.

[Dennis_Knutson]

As I mentioned in your other thread, the instrument is broken and should be repaired by the vendor. I'm assuming that you've tried different cables. A bad cable could cause a fault as well.

[Vectrix]

Hi rutgers and Dennis,

I am currently trying to communicate with Solartron SI 1287 and SI 1260 through LabVIEW without much luck. And now, I've found this thread in which rutgers have described the exact situation I am facing right now. I have tried a few things and like to share my findings.

Firstly, my current situation:

I am looking at the same thing in MAX where the devices are detected but has "Device did not respond to *IDN? query" as the description. Also, for each physical device, two instruments with sequential address number are displayed in MAX. For example, SI 1287 has a primary address of 8. In MAX it would show up as Instrument 0 with address 8 and Instrument 1 with address 9 both saying that the device did not respond to *IDN? query.

I have updated all the softwares to the latest version (488.2, DAQmx, VISA, Run-Time Engine). And since I don't have 24/7 access to the devices, I am building applications on a laptop and running them with run-time engine on the target computer (Windows 2000).

Secondly, what I have tried and found:

I think it's too quick to jump to the conclusion that the device is broken. I have downloaded the newest version of the NI SI 1260 driver and tested it. It works like a charm. No errors there whatsoever with the primary address. (Keeping in mind that the *IDN? query is still a prbolem and two devices showed up instead of one). I have tried the driver with only SI 1260 connected and with both 1287 and 1260 connected to the computer. I also tried the second extraneous address, and the code ran for a while but eventually returned an error. All testings were done with NI-Spy running in the background which captures all the communications beautifully. I don't think a defective device can do that.

Unfortunately, my focus is on driving SI 1287 and I haven't had much luck since there isn't a nicely packaged project from NI. I had requested a set of codes from Solartron, but the codes are outdated and simply doesn't work. SI 1287 is used extensively in this lab, and I really doubt that it is broken. Currently, it is being driven with a software called the CorrWare. I was able to capture all the communications between the CorrWare and SI 1287 with NI-Spy perfectly.

One obvious difference between the NI SI1260 driver and the CorrWare is that NI driver makes "vi" calls whereas CorrWare makes "ib" calls (by examing the spy captures). My guess is that vi calls are higher level than ib calls.

Finally, my conclusion:

As long as the devices can be detected in MAX, there is a way to communicate with the devices in LabVIEW dispite the fact that the devices may not respond to *IDN? query. This can be caused by the incompatibilites between the old devices and the new versions of softwares. And as pointed out in another thread, communication speed might also be a factor. (and by looking at the spy captures, I tend to agree.)

I still require assistance on getting 1287 to work in LabVIEW. I am thinking of trying to mimick what is done in 1260 driver. If anyone out there has a working example handy, a copy is greatly appreciated.

Cheers,
Vec

[Dennis_Knutson]

Well, you don't ahve to issue the *IDN? query in your program if you don't want to. The fact that it does not work in MAX is irrelevant. if it appears in MAX at all, then you can use the VISA Write and VISA Read commands. You are correct that the vi commands are a higher level than the ib commands but in fact, the vi commands are actually issuing ib commands. VISA just hides some of the low level functionality. With the NI-Spy capture, you should be able to take the commands you see there and use either the Instrument I/O Assistant or use VISA directly. You also have the option of using the low level GPIB functions. If you use the 'Communicate With Instrument' function in MAX, you will be using GPIB and the ib commands.

[rutgers]

Hi Vectrix

I will try to help you as much as i can because i was able to solve this problem partially.
First of all you are right that the device is not broken. I went through the manual and found out that when you connect the instrument it has two addresses assigned to it, a primary address for regular communication and a secondary for some sort of digital communication. However, we just need to point to the primary address in labview.

Secondly, when i talked to a company technician he told me that the device doesnt not 'understand' the IDN command. However there are other GPIB commands listed in the 1260 manual ( ex. TT0 for self test) that can be used to perform a basic check though MAX.

In my case i was able to communicate with the device, set the measurement parameters, but could not read out the  measurements consistently for some reason. I finally gave  up and used an hp 4192a which worked perfectly.

Regarding you final aim to make the 1287 work, i had done what Dennis has said, ie use the low level gpib commands. If you go through the block diagrams for the various vi drivers for 1260 you will see that they build the gpib commands in there. You can play around with that and then see if the same commands can be applied to 1287. Normally the available GPIB commands are listed in the manual for the device. Just try making it do basic things like setting some parameters and check in the instrument display if it works.

Hope this helps.

[Vectrix]

Hi rutgers,

Thank you for your information and the offer to help. I don't have much time to spend on this project and therefore I need all the help I can get.

I have dug up the manual which was in fact a great help as you mentioned that it contains all the permissible commands. I have downloaded the latest driver for SI1280b device which is very similar to SI1287 in functionalities, and modified the codes to fit my needs. I just tested one of my modified codes and it appears to be working. However, I was wondering whether you would recommend using vi calls or ib calls for rapid communications to and from the device. Also, is it possible (and how) to write commands to the GPIB board instead of the devices.

Thanks again,