Weird Behavior using LabVIEW Inst Driver with Agilent 3300A (CR mode)

[Shawn_S.]

Hello All,

We have filed a Corrective Action Request (CAR # 383093) regarding this issue.  I appreciate everyone's patience as we investigate the issue and work to implement a resolution.  Should anyone have future repairs that are needed to drivers, the best way to have their changes implemented is to write instrument.drivers@ni.com.  However, you may of course also post on discussion forums.  The Instrument Drivers group maintains the instrument.drivers@ni.com inbox, and we also monitor the forums.

[Albert.Geven]

Hi

please sunshinedesign, could you help with your driver implementation.

also which functions should be grouped or not.

i have no experience with this machine but are interested in views on psu and this one is as electronic load also a kind of psu

[Shawn_S.]

Hello All,

I agree with Albert.Geven.  We've been reviewing the driver for the Agilent N3300A and we would like to know how customers have resolved this issue previously.  We need a fix that would apply to most individual's applications.  

We could modify the driver's documentation so users are more aware of the restrictions associated with the Range setting.  This setting will affect the acceptable entries for the Triggered, Transient, and Input (resistance/voltage/current) settings.  To clarify, there are Triggered, Transient, and Input controls in each of the Configure Voltage.vi, Configure Resistance.vi, and Configure Current.vi code.  Also, if an entry is left blank, there is a default value of 1000 that is used for the Triggered, Transient, and Input controls.

Before we make any changes, we want to see customers post their solutions.  So please post and explain what modifications have been made.  Also, feel free to post any additional recommendations.

[UFOslava]

In my case no changes in the driver are nessesary. Just a slightly better explanation on how to use value, transient and range functions correctly and why is it important to use them together.

Also, if transient mode is not in use, why do i need to set it within range in the first place?

[Ken3006]

In my case,

I had to refer to the Agilent's Programmers User Guide for reference on how the 3300A was to be 'programmed' based on their pseudo coding.

As for the Labview drivers, my suggestion would be to have the 'Config' subVI for each mode to follow the guidelines from the Agilent's guide.  For instance, if you are using Trigger or Transient settings, it should not be left default with values being sent to the device; but should not be included in the command list within the 'Config' subVI.

Perhaps a mode of operation selection style subVI would be more suitable, for the variety of usages for the 3300A.

Just my thoughts.

Thanks and Best Regards,

Ken

[Shawn_S.]

Changes to the documentation have been made to the Agilent N330x series driver.  We've updated the context help, known issues section in the readme.html file, and included a note on the front panel of the Configure Voltage.vi, Configure Current.vi, and Configure Resistance.vi.  

These changes should take effect within a day of this post.

This will allow us to keep the driver backwards compatible and also prepare customers with work around instructions to error -222 "Data out of range".