Waveform data acquistion with HP instrument VI

[yurisagan]

I'm trying to acquire a waveform from an HP 54600A series oscilloscope using the instrument VI found in Labview. However, I did not realize in using these tools the waveform is aquired only in single-shot form (ie only at one moment in time). Therefore I looped the aquisition, but it is only as fast as the loop can occur, which is every half second or so. I need a continous stream of data. How do I do this?

[Kim L]

Hello,

I have a couple of ideas. First, does the oscilloscope have a continuous mode? The instrument driver simply implements the features of the instrument, so we can only expect to find continuous mode in the instrument driver if the instrument has that functionality.

When you are placing the loop in the program, make sure that you only include the necessary functions in the loop. Do not include any configuration in the loop unless you need to change the configuration each time through. If you are writing to the chart, you may want to leave the chart outside of the loop and write to it only after the data collection is complete. Another option is to write to the chart after collecting a set number of points.

I hope this helps.

Kim L.
Application
s Engineer
National Instruments