Keysight 34143A with Labview - Data Speed Issue

[AliasLP]

Hi everyone,

I am currently working with a Keysight 34143A DC Electronic Load device, and using labview to control/receive data from it. I've noticed that when using Labview, the more complicated the structures are, the longer the loop will take to execute. Is there a good practice to be able to take full use of the Instrument and not have Labview be the limiting factor on recording data?

For instance, the Keysight Load should be able to process data at 20microsecond intervals, but requires constant read commands from Labview to keep sending that data back. So each loop Labview is running in the below program is the limiting factor of how quick I can get that data. The W/R blocks are also in Async. Sorry if the answer is obvious, I'm not really a programmer and still new with Labview in general. Thanks for all the ideas/help!

[cstorey · Accepted solution]

Best practice would be..

1) Have the instrument do a sweep, where the data is stored in the instrument as fast as possible, then once the measurement completes the program reads all the data from instrument memory all at once before storing it to disk.

2) If you don't follow #1, then your code can be faster if you dodn't write data to file on every loop iteration, just write once the measurement is finished.  (i.e. put the write outside the While loop.)  You are still fetching the data at a slower than possible rate, but not making things worse by also writing to disk after every read.

Hope that helps.

Craig