Erratic behavior Lakeshore 330

[MrMorden]

Hello, people:

I am getting strange behavior from my Lakeshore 330.  I tried to simply download and use the "Getting started temperature controller.vi" included in the driver, but when I do, the program fails after initizlizing with error BFFF0015, which is apparently a timeout error of some sort.  If I try to run the program again, it fails at the initialize.vi with the same error.

I can see and communicate with the device in MAX, but it unpredictably stops responding to commands after a while, and I need to turn the machine on and off in order to get it to respond again.

Strangely enough, the driver was working fine for some of the time yesterday, in addition to the behavior I described above.  I can't find any rhyme or reason for the device's behavior.  Can anyone help?

Thank you,
Alex

[Chris_R.]

Hi Alex!

Are you using this instrument with any other instruments? I found some documentation of conflicts this device has when used with other devices. It is probably something else, but I wanted to ask anyway. I have attached a simple VISA GPIB Write and Read program. Run it and see if you get the same behavior. If this works, there may be a problem with the driver files. When you have to power cycle the instrument to get it to work again like you are having to do, this sometimes means that a data transfer session is not closing properly or an invalid command has been sent to the instrument to cause it to lock. This may also happen if the instrument is trying to read an empty buffer. Make sure that the command you are sending is actually being fully written each time. If you try to read too fast, the instrument will try to read before anything is written. Were you able to repeat the problem easily or is it still unpredictable. Please check these things and provide an update. I will be happy to help out from there! Have a great day!

Chris R.

Applications Engineer

National Instruments

Message Edited by Chris_R. on 09-08-2005 06:26 PM