Fluke 189 Multimeter Not Recognized as a VISA resource

[MatthewW]

What I'm running: LabView 8.2 on Mac OSX, with the latest VISA drivers and DAQmx Base 3.

Problem: I am trying to communicate with a Fluke 189 multimeter via the USB IR connection. When the multimeter is plugged into the USB port I can see it in the VISA configuration utility but I cannot receive it as a VISA resource name in any of the example LV vi's.

Any help would be appreciated.

[Chris_K_]

Hi Matthew

In the Visa Configuration utility, what is the multimeter showing up as?  Note that the Visa Resource Name must be typed into the control.  Have a look at this link.  It explains how you use our VISA finder utility. If you are still having problems, try to assign an alias to the device in the Configuration utility and then find that in LabVIEW. 

Chris_K

[MatthewW]

Hey Chris,
The DMM shows up in VISA config as USB0::0x0403::0x6001::A5002hhT::RAW. I went and tried this in the LV control field and that was a no go, so I gave it the alias Fluke189 and also tried that to no avail. The following error is straight from fl18x Application Example.vi found on the NI website.

ERROR: Error -1073807341 occurred at fl18x Application Example.vi,
Possible reason(s): VISA: (Hex 0xBFFF0013) Invalid access mode.

Matt

Message Edited by MatthewW on 03-17-2008 10:32 AM

[Chris_K_]

Hi Matt,

I have a few things that we can try.  First can you ensure that you are using the fl18x for LabVIEW 8.0.  Second can you ensure you are using the latest VISA driver.  Currently it is NI-VISA 4.3.  If you are using 4.3, can you try uninstalling and reinstalling them.  Lastly it may be helpful to preform an NI-Spy capture while running this VI and the post it.  This will allow us to monitor the VISA calls and may lead to a potential solution.

Chris_K 

[MatthewW]

Here is a capture from NI Spy. The first bit is me refreshing the NI-VISA Configuration window. The second part is running the example vi. The picture is of the front panel of the example vi.

If you watch the vi run in the block diagram the error originates from fl18x Initialize Front Panel.vi.

Matt

[pBerg]

Howdy Matthew,

The NI Spy log shows that the Fluke 189 instrument doesn't respond to the "ID" command as the fl18x Application Example.vi expects. You can dive into the fl18x Initialize.vi to the fl18x Read Special.vi and see that it expects to receive a "0\r" response from the "ID" command sent to the instrument. It fails to get this "0\r" reply from the instrument, so the VI instead throws the 0xBFFF0013 error (aka -1073807341). Summarily, the instrument fails to initialize, and the remaining part of the example VI fails to run.

These two lines from the NI Spy log illustrate this:

28.  VISA Write ("DMM", "ID")
29.  VISA Read ("DMM", 100, ".`")

Line 29 should instead read something like VISA Read ("DMM", 100, "0", 1) which would indicate that it read one byte, and that byte was "0"

I checked the configuration portion of this VI against the settings listed on this page to verify that everything matches in terms of end modes, baud rates, parity, etc. (They do in fact match, so there should be no problem as far as software-configurable port settings.) This means one of three things:

1. The Fluke 189 isn't actually receiving the "ID" command
2. The Fluke 189 does not recognize the "ID" command
3. The Fluke 189's response to the "ID" command isn't as the LabVIEW VI expects.

You might try verifying the proper VISA resource name as well as the connections on the Fluke instrument itself. Beyond that, you might try connecting the instrument to another computer and running the fl18x Application Example.vi on the other machine. I couldn't find any documentation stating that the Fluke 189 required any special sort of configuration in a Mac OS, but it might be worth the effort to test the instrument on a Windows machine to see if you see the same results.

I hope this helps!

[pBerg]

Just a shot in the dark here...have you tried resetting the device and/or cycling its power?

[MatthewW]

Hey there,
I got it up and running on a windows box we have here and the example vi works just perfectly. Not a single hiccup. Unfortunately, this machine isn't deployable for this other application. The windows machine runs LV 8.o, DAQmx, and the latest VISA drivers.

Would it be informative to run NI SPY on this machine and post that?

Matt

[Wayne.C]

Matt,

Any chance that there is a hardware driver that needs to be installed for the USB-IR cable and that it just happend to have been installed on the other pc?  You said that the device shows up as USB0::0x0403::0x6001::A5002hhT::RAW.  I suspect that RAW means that it is a RAW USB connection.  I'm pretty sure that the LV driver is expecting it to show up as a COM port.

[jAvA.iitm]

Right click the VISA resource name drop down box in the vi front panel and go to :

"Select VISA Class -> I/O Session -> USB Raw"

You might find it after refreshing it...I faced a similar problem.

cheers,

java