Communication problem with Ocean Optics STS Spectrometer

[h_iliev]

Ok, i have some progress, partially solving the problem. The communication with the device is ok, but i was averaging incorrectly(Read Spectra.vi was outside the loop). I also add dark signal measurement averaged for 1000 measurements. With the attached *.vi i was able to measure the spectrum of white light. However the sensitivity is very bad (the source is very close to the fiber) and the averaging go very slow (few seconds for 500 times).

I am open for suggestions. 

Regards

Hristo

[Minions]

Some metering equipment is capable of taking multiple samples then calculating an average before presenting that onto the communication bus.  This way, the equipment (Spectrometer) can perform a significant part of the load by handling the reads and averaging without being limited by the communication overhead.   

This instrument does not follow the standard SCPI protocol and instead uses JSL (Jaz Scripting Language).  From what I can tell, the only possibility for performing this would be MULTI(a,b,c) function.  Not sure if that helps much in reducing the communication overhead.

[h_iliev]

I did some digging and it sames you are correct. According to data sheet of STS spectrometer there is an option for integration(min 10 microseconds, max 10s). There is also a detailed description of the communication protocol (structure, commands, data, etc.).

The example i post before just send the command to get raw spectrum and nothing more. However it locks like the code is organized to build command string for different commands and you just have to send the integration time command and the time before reading the spectrum. I will test this later, but obviously there is a room for improvements.