Acquiring data from E4440a spectrum analyzer using GPIB to USB cable into LabView 7.1

[Learner2009]

Hi

I am a newbie to Labview data acquisition. I need some help in connecting E4440a Agilent spectrum analyzer using a GPIB to USB cable. Could anyone give some guidance in acquiring data.

Thanks

[Dennis_Knutson]

There is an IVI driver available for it here. If you are not familiar with instrument drivers in general and IVI specifically, you can get more information at NI's IVI page and What is an instrument driver. For simple tasks, you might try using the Instrument I/O Assistant. You'll need the programming manual for the instrument.

[Learner2009]

Dennis

Thanks for the reply. So should I use the VISA functions in the Instrument toolbox? I made a small program using some funcitons from visa toolbox and it works fine for some commands like "*IDN?". But if I try using any commands like "READ", I get the following error message.

Error -1073807339 occurred at VISA Read in gpibintr.vi

Possible reason(s):

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

Could please let me know the reason for this error.  Why am I getting timeout message? What is the mistake I am doing?

Thanks

[Dennis_Knutson]

The command "Read" all by itself probably isn't a valid command for the instrument. Unless you send a command that exactly matches the syntax that the instrument supports, you won't get anything back and you won't be able to set it up. You have to have the instrument's programming manual in order to understand which commands you can send and the format of the data you get back. If you were to use the driver, then you wouldn't need to learn any of the sometimes complicated syntax.

Message Edited by Dennis Knutson on 06-27-2006 04:04 PM