[Premium-Rx] WJ Radio Control for GPIB

[Brooke Clarke]

Hi Steve:

LabVIEW is a graphical programming language.  When most people read that 
they think it's for programming Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) but 
that's not what those words mean.  The idea is that you write the code 
as a graphic that's mostly mouse driven, you don't type in text for the 
program.  This has tremendous implications for avoiding all kinds of 
errors (it also supports new types of errors).  But a person that does 
not how to program in LabVIEW can look at the code and easily understand 
what it's doing in detail, something that's flat out impossible with "C" 
or any of the flavors of Basic.

National Instruments got their start making HP-IB interface cards for a 
plethora of computers and that grew into LabVIEW for writing instrument 
control programs, and for that I think it's phenomenal.  Controlling a 
receiver is the type of thing is was made to do.

You are not limited to using HP-IB (GP-IB, IEEE488, IEEE488.2) but can 
also use serial, parallel (printer), USB ports as well as others.

A few years ago the code to talk to the HP 34401 DMM using HP-IB  would 
be different from the code using RS-232.  But with the "VISA" drivers 
the code remains the same (if the instrument responds the same way) for 
any I/O port.

The capability using LabVIEW is limited by the receiver not the 
software.  For example all the subtle HP-IB commands are supported which 
are not supported in the low priced implementations.

There are native objects for things like X-Y or Y-T plots that have very 
fancy user interfaces like very sophisticated cursor operations.

Religious post now over & Have Fun,

Brooke Clarke (someone who's written a ton of LabVIEW and Rocky Mountain 
Basic instrument control software)

w/Java http://www.PRC68.com
w/o Java http://www.pacificsites.com/~brooke/PRC68COM.shtml
http://www.precisionclock.com



stephous wrote:

>I'm at that point where I'm thinking of Watkins-Johnson radio control
>software again. The server is ready and has an NI 488.2 GPIB card. What's
>missing is control software. I have off the shelf programs that control some
>radios and not others. None of them work great.
>
>1) Scanstar has software for the 8615, 8617, and 8618 families, but not for
>the 8716 and 8718
>
>2) Ergo might develop code if I could provide the protocols. I only have the
>8617 and 18 strings right now, but that might change soon.
>
>3) LabView from NI is a possibility but it's still unclear how much
>capability it will provide. Has anyone developed an application with it?
>
>I envision useful software being capable of working with the 8716, 8718,
>8615, 8617, 8618 and possibly a few other radios. These radios have GPIB
>interfaces for many reasons. When you have racks of radios it becomes clear
>that one control point would be extremely useful.
>
>What have people tried? Opinions and results?
>
>Steve Pappin
>
>_______________________________________________
>Premium-Rx Mailing List
>To Post: premium-rx at mailman.qth.net
>For Info: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/premium-rx
>Visit the Website: http://kahuna.sdsu.edu/~mechtron/PremRxPage/
>Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmmain.htm
>
>  
>