Setting up / programming for MKS 146

[Yezhik]

Hi!

I am having trouble figuring out how to get MKS to work. I wrote a simple LabView VI that uses VisaRead and Write to request data if MKS is on or off. The error comes back saying "Timeout expired before operation completed".
If this error is not due to syntax of the message, what could it mean?
Do I need to set anything up for this hardware in Measurement and Automation?
Can I keep track of what comes out of the serial port?

Thank you very much!

Elena

[DiegoF]

Hi,

Most of the times the read timeouts are caused by sending the incorrect command to the device. Specially not sending the right termination character. Make sure you are attaching to the message the termination character the device expects.

You can use NI-SPY to keep track of what VISA functions are called. Check this tutorial.

Diego
national instruments.

[Yezhik]

Diego,

Thanks for your advice. I was suspecting that as well, but I don't know how to fix the problem. I need to send carriage return as my termination character, so I send in "\r" with "Special characters" setting ON for the constant string. If it's not "\r" what could it be?

Thank you,

Elena

[DiegoF]

Hi,

The answer would be in the instrument's documentation.

In any case, a very commonly used termination character is the linefeed (\n). Try that one.

DiegoF
National Instruments.