How do I send commands to my oscilloscope in NIMAX?

[jonabel1971]

Hello all,

I am new to LabView and have purchased a digital oscilloscope & a digital signal generator. 

I have the Remote command list for each of them. 

The oscilloscope is USB, and the signal generator only has an RS232 port. 

I am able to send commands to the oscilloscope through the EasyScope software that came with the scope, such as *CAL?, which successfully calibrates my scope.

However, I cannot get my scope to respond in NIMAX.   Nor am I able to get the Signal Generator to work in either NIMAX or EasyScope.  

Could someone tell me what I need to do to activate my USB channel in NIMAX, and also my RS232 channel?  

[Norbert_B]

NI MAX is the National Instruments Measurement and Automation Explorer. It is an interface to NI hardware products installed in your system.

As the scope and the signal generator are not from NI, you wont see them there.

Using NI VISA, you can "talk" with interfaces like RS232. So using the VISA Test Panel (which can be opened from MAX) you can read and write strings to the serial port.

USB is no interface you have a test panel for. You can use NI VISA to interface instruments via USB, but most often it is easier if the vendor of the instruments provides a driver DLL.

Did you check the vendors homepage (both instruments) if they provide NI LabVIEW "instrument drivers"? This is normally the most simple way to solve it as you'd want to use the instrument in LV, not in MAX.....

hope this helps,

Norbert

[jonabel1971]

These are cheaper devices from ATTEN.   They also go under the name Siglent.   I have an ADS1102CAL+ scope, and a ATF20D+PA signal generator.  

I am running 64bit Windows 8.    I am able to get both the scope & COM1 serial port to show up in NIMax and they look good in Device manager. 

The Serial cable is a USB to RS232 adapter, since my PC has no serial ports.

The test panel returns a string for the scope serial number using *IDN?, but none of the other commands work. 

Here are 3 screenshots.  3rd shot is 2 commands (*IDN? & *CAL? for the USB Scope.  )

I have not been able to get the USB drivers to work or install from their website.

[Norbert_B]

In the last screeshot, the test panel tells that the *CAL? command has a return count of 5. What happens if you only read 5 characters instead of 1024?

I assume that the instrument does not use "termination characters" for each reply which can create issues in the communication.

Please note that the COM1 port is marked with an exclamation mark in MAX. This can happen if you already tried to establish a communication with it but not closing it afterwords. Another issue might be that the USB-Serial driver lacks important functionality.

I recommend you to also try to get support from ATTEN regarding these questions.

Norbert

[jonabel1971]

They are not responding to emails.   They are in China.   I was only able to get the Remote Command List by contacting Siglent.   I will try reducing the string length. Thanks.

[jonabel1971]

Reducing the byte length did not do anything. Anybody else run into these issues?  

[Norbert_B]

Well, are you sure that *CAL? generates a reply from the scope at all?

Given your information, i would expect the scope to calibrate without sending any data back.

Read should only be performed for commands which will create a reply.

Norbert

[jonabel1971]

Possibly, but the point is that my scope does not calibrate when I send the command.   When I send the command in EasyScope, the scope calibrates.   

[Norbert_B · Accepted solution]

It is rather odd that the scope replies correctly on *IDN?, but fails to react on *CAL?.

Does CAL maybe require sokme specific termination character?

What happens if you perform the CAL without IDN before when you have a fresh session? Maybe, the scope locks up somehow with the IDN.....

Norbert

[jonabel1971]

I have done all those things.   Maybe I am nof installing the drivers properly.   Is there a particular directory to put the .sys files in?