Controlling two instruments with GPIB

[cprayaga]

I have a Stanford Research Systems PTC10 Temperature controller, and a Fluke/Phillips LCR meter, both connected to my computer via GPIB. I know the individual commands for each instrument and I can query and parse the response from each instrument separately. I now need to send commands to both instruments and get responses from them. For example, I need to:

PTC 10 -- Set temperature Tset

PTC 10 -- Query temperature T

If T = Tset, then 

     FLUKE -- Query Capacitance

How do I set up such a program?

[nyc_(is_out_of_here)]

Assuming you purchased a NI GPIB card, the installation would have included examples in various programming languages.

[crossrulz]

Make sure each instrument has a different GPIB address.  If they are set to the same address, you will have conflicts.  Once you have that set up, you can just send the commands you have been.

As far as cabling, you will need two GPIB cables.  Piggy back the cables in a chain, not a star, configuration.

[cprayaga]

Thank you. Yes. I have the instruments cabled with separate GPIB cables, I am using different GPIB addresses.

Should I use an Instrument IO assistant for each instrument, or is there a way to send commands without the Instrument IO Assistant?

I want to start a project in Labview for this. For each instrument separately, I could send commands successfully. But I don't know the method for conbining the two intsruments into a single project, sending a command to one instrument depending on the state of the other, etc. Is there an example project which I could look at?

Thank you again for your time.   

[Dennis_Knutson]

First, try Help> Find Instrument Drivers. The Instrument Assistant could be used but there is a great deal of overhead in using it. The regular VISA functions are simple to use.

If you have not taken the LabVIEW tutorials, take them now. With an understanding of data flow, you should be able to use two different instruments and control execution order with error in/out terminals. How to use comparison functions, etc. will be included in the tutorials.