Agilent 4156 bug or Labview driver bug?

[Evander]

Hi,

I'm using Labview 8.5 to control Agilent 4156C for some customerized measurements. Now I have a problem. I need to configure at least 3 SMUs. I chose SMU 1-3.  I'm modifying the example program whic come with the installation of 4156C driver under labview.The problem is that whenever I use the Configure Channe subVI from the 4156 pannel to change the configuration of SMU3 and SMU4, there's an error message -1074000000. I simply choose SMU1 or SMU2 for the same operation, everything is fine. Is there anything I did wrong, or there might be some bugs? Thanks!

BTW, when I was searching drivers for this equipment, I found 3 possible drivers with the key word of "Agilent Technologies 4156C" and "HP 4156C". Is there any different between these 3 drivers? 

Evander

[Dennis_Knutson]

There are really only 2 drivers. There is the project style driver which is written in LabVIEW by NI and there is the DLL with wrapper. The wrapper (either LabVIEW 7 or LabVIEW 8, uses the Call Library Function Node to call a dll written by Agilent.

I don't have the instrument but I would suggest you look at how the error query is being performed since that is where the error code is pointing. And, I would recomend you use the project style driver. You can debug that like any other piece of LabVIEW code and make changes at the lowest level if you do indeed find out that there is a bug in the driver. You can't do that with the wrapper driver unless you have the source code used to create the dll.

[Evander]

The error message is "invalid configuration". By "the project style driver", do you mean "create instrument driver project" under tools/instrumentation menu? I'm using this. My problem is that I assign same configuration to SMU1 and 2, it works. But SMU3 and 4 don't work. They should behave the same way.

[Dennis_Knutson]

Strange. I plugged that error into a LabVIEW error container before and it said something different. I don't get anything now so it must be an instrument driver specific error.

By project style driver I mean exactly what it says on the instrument driver network - project style driver. It says the same thing on the 'Go to Driver Page' link

I have no idea why you would be creating a new instrument driver project since the project already exists (unless you downloaded the DLL with Wrapper driver).

Determine where the error is happening and see if the error is a result of error checking in the code or something returned by the instrument. If it's returned by the instrument, look at the actual command being sent to the instrument. You can also use NI-spy to capture the commands. Compare the command to where is in the programming manual.

You've also not given any details on the modifications you made. Post your code. Someone with experience with it might see something.

[Evander]

Dennis, thanks for the discussion!

I'm attaching my program here.  The error code appears at the first SMU configuration component.Please help to debug. Thanks!

Evander

[Dennis_Knutson]

Why do you have it password protected? And why did you change the default name of the folder the driver gets installed to?

Message Edited by Dennis Knutson on 09-09-2009 02:16 PM

[Evander]

Oops...

Please check this one.

[Dennis_Knutson]

Better.

It appears the error is coming from the instrument. In the Configure Channel (SMU), there is a call to the error query function which does a SYST:ERR? query and the message you see is what the instrument replies with.

As I've said, I'm not familiar with the instrument and don't know if there is another setting that has to be applied to the instrument before you can run these commands.

Whenever I get a new instrument and driver, I first set it up manually and then determine what functions I need to call in order to reproduce the manual setup.

[Evander]

Actually, I've done what you said. Mannually, these settings works perfectly. It just cannot go with the labview program. That's what is confusing me. Thanks for your time anyway!

Evander

[Suchit]

I do not have 4156 right now with me but I have 4145 & 4155 with me. I see, that you have not configured any Common SMU. Are you sure, it worked for you manually with the same settings?