[Test-Equipment] Any GPIB and/or LabVIEW users?

[J. Forster]

I'm in roughly the same situation. I loved the 'quick and dirty' HP 85
appreoach, but anything longer than a simple loop or two was really hard
to edit on the tiny screen. The later HP 98xx did solve that but I never
had one.

Some months ago, I bought a NI PCMCIA GPIB card (if you go looking, there
are THREE DIFFERENT, all incompatible, cables. Be warned).

I was also able to get an older version of LabVIEW and have been trying to
learn it. It is non-trivial.

First off, LabView is radically different in most every way from something
like HP 85 BASIC. There are a ton of conventions to learn and you have to
do things "their way" or you get very obscure error messages. After a
couple of days work, I now understand basically how it works, but so far I
cannot read a DMM or flip a physical switch. I can process simulated
signals in complex ways though.

The reason I went with LabVIEW is the Instrument Driver library. I naively
thought I could type in an instrument ID and talk-listen to it almost
plug-n-play. This would save having to learn every instruments'
instruction set. This now looks like an illusion, but I'm not sure.

There are versions of the HP Test Basic that runs on PCs which are
supposed to be like the HP 85 SW, but I don't think they run w/ the PCMCIA
GPIB cards.

My current feeling is there are no really simple ways to control a few
instruments, except with something like an HP 85.  :((

FWIW,

-John

======================

> At 02:26 AM 11/18/2010, you wrote:
>>I'm looking to a little bit of "amateur experimenting" in physics. To
>>monitor my results I want to connect 3 pieces of test equipment (arb.
>>wave. gen.; scope; DMM) and control them via a feedback loop program
>>(modify the gen. depending on readings from the other 2).
>
> In the good old days, I used an HP85 computer with GPIB port to write
> HP Basic programs to control test equipment. Worked really well but
> was slow, couldn't accept much data (limited to something like 65
> KILObytes memory), and didn't have any way to port the data to a PC,
> could only print a strip of paper with the data.
>
>>The only ways I know to do this is with National Instruments' LabVIEW
>>or to write a custom program.
>>
>>LabVIEW is the off-the-shelf answer, but the controllers are spendy
>>(US$800-plus and up) unless I go with e-Bay, but the software is also
>>pricey.
>
> That's why I won't touch labview.
>
>>There are several other hardware options (ie, third-party
>>controllers). Most are re-labeled Prologix USB or Ethernet
>>controllers. The Prologix drivers provide a virtual serial port
>>through which you can communicate using a terminal program. This is
>>different from the NI controllers, but I'm not clear on the
>>differences.
>
> Using KE5FX's free software, you can use a Prologix to download plots
> from many test equipment. But I'm unaware of any software to control the
> stuff.
>
> Steve K0XP
>
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