Communication with HP4194A via GPIB

[Jhon洪]

Hello everyone,
I believe that there are many capable engineers, and i will appreciated it very much if someone can help me solve the problems i encountered.
I'm using an old instrument called HP 4194A impedance/gain-phase analyzer.In the beginning, we operate it manually, however, my boss ask me to control this instrument by program now. I am a beginner, i don't konw how to solve these problems at all.
i used a Agilent 82357B GPIB/USB converter to connect HP 4194A and PC. When I plugged the GPIB interface into the instrument, Agilent Connection Expert automatically recognized the instrument and sent the command, but received the following error message: The instrument failed to return an IDN string. Does it mean failing to connect the instrument.
Is there anyone that encountered the same problem? can you tell me how to solve this problem? All help would be gratefully recived.
/Regards John 洪

[carmen9]

Found this manual from Keysight.

Other tutorials:

https://knowledge.ni.com/KnowledgeArticleDetails?id=kA03q000000YFtOCAW&l=en-US

https://www.ni.com/en/support/documentation/supplemental/06/ni-visa-overview.html

[cstorey]

This is a VERY old instrument, it does not support IEEE488.2 commands like *IDN?.  (It doesn't even support IEEE488.1 but IEEE-1978!)   If using command expert or VISA Assistant like in your 3rd photo, you need to uncheck the  IEEE 488.2 box and use "Custom".  To find the commands you need you will have to read the manuals carefully.

The instrument commands are in the Operation Manual, and you can download this from Keysight (Free, but an account is required) - https://www.keysight.com/en/pd-1000003398%3Aepsg%3Apro-pn-4194A/impedance-gain-phase-analyzer?pm=PL&...

Pg 249 is the start of the Remote Operation guide.  You should read that section, but more importantly look at the example programs and setup commands starting on Pg 264.  You should be able to find everything you need buried in those to setup your measurement and read back the data.  

Hope that helps.

Craig

[Albert.Geven]

Hi 

attached a project written in LV8.2 that reads the HP4194A 

it still is named internally 4194 but was used with the A version

good luck

[Jhon洪]

Thank you very much, your project is very useful, I am really happy and grateful.Can you tell me how to save the test results to a spreadsheet? I will appreciate it very much！

[Albert.Geven]

Hi

The easiest way is to write to a delimited text file.

You can write a 1D or a 2D array to a text file and if you select the correct delimiter for excel (tab works) then you can read it into excel afterwards.

All possibilities to write it directly to excel are much more complicated.

The vi you should use is waiting in the fileIO palette upper left

[Jhon洪]

Hi

Do you mean that I need to create a new VI? But I don't know how to draw the block diagram.Thank you very much if you can provide a template for the block diagram so I can try to draw it. 

[Albert.Geven]

Hi

Which version of LabVIEW are you using?

I will save i that version, but.... one more question.

How do you write your main program? If you are afraid om making a subvi?

It is very easy to make a subvi from a part of your main program.

Just select the part of your main program you want to put in a subvi and in the menu select edit/creat subvi.

[PZT]

Hi Jhon

This useful website may help you.

https://exality.com/beautiful-hp-4194a-plots/

Rick Wang