[Premium-Rx] WJ Radio Control for GPIB

[Gary Geissinger]

Guys,

LabVIEW is a great solution to this problem.  Here is another approach
to consider as well.

I decided to slave a WJ-8712 to my HF-1000 so that I could make them
kinda behave like an IC-7800 in master/slave receive capability.  You
know, the simple stuff, like passing settings back and forth and having
banks of memory channels. I also wanted a GUI display with all the
widgets.

My solution was to use PCs running Borland C++ Builder 6.0.  The Borland
environment is very easy to use and allows for GUI development and
real-world I/O.  The Borland tools are inexpensive compared to some
other approaches.

Another application I had was direction finding using two sites each
with a WJ-8615 and a WJ-9477. To this I added a pair of Rockwell GPS
receivers for time tagging of the digitized IF files as well as a
frequency reference for the receivers.  Again I used the Borland
environment.  It worked well with the National Instruments IEEE-488
boards.  By the time the project was completed each DF site had a
computer talking to a custom A/D board, a WJ-8615, a WJ-9477, a Rockwell
GPS receiver, and a PK-232 TNC that was used for site to site links.

If you write in C or Pascal you may want to consider the Borland stuff.
They also have a similar Java development environment (although I've
never used it).

73's,

Gary WA0SPM


 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: premium-rx-bounces at mailman.qth.net
[mailto:premium-rx-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of Brooke Clarke
Sent: Monday, March 26, 2007 8:22 PM
To: stephous
Cc: Premium-rx
Subject: Re: [Premium-Rx] WJ Radio Control for GPIB

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
>
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