Import .bmp from Tektronix THS730A

[LV-n4p]

How can I import the .bmp file the Tektroniks THS 730 sends, when using the Hardcopy button ???

Using LabVIEW 6.1 on Windows 2000, the instrument drivers are installed, but there are only VI's to import waveforms...

Hope my problem is clear and somebody can help me.

[Dennis_Knutson]

You are probably going to have to dig through the progamming manual to see whether the instrument has any support for re-directing the file over the GPIB port. Sometimes you can save locally and then do a file transfer. Often, the instrument manufacturer does not provide any mechanism for doing this. I'm not familiar with this particular model of scope. Have you tried contacting Tek support?

Even when the instrument support such a command, I never use it anyway. Since I'm controlling the instrument and getting the waveforms through LabVIEW, I simply save the LabVIEW front panel as a jpg or bmp file. All of the information on the scope's screen is usually present or can be made present. It's the waveform transfer that is time consuming and to add a transfer of a bmp file seems to just add unnecessary time.

[LV-n4p]

First thanks a lot for your reply. Haven't contacted tek service, but I'm going to.

The Scope is connected via RS 232 because it hasen't GPIB.

There is a programm called WINTEK, which is able to receive the .bmp file from the Scope. I need exactly the same functionality realised in LabVIEW. The Screenshot is needed for the protokoll of a test-routine, and therefor the waveform is not good enough, because it looks as bad as you can see in the attachment. Perhaps I'm doing something wrong, and better quality including rasters is possible ???

[Dennis_Knutson]

It's too bad that you don't have GPIB because it would be just a matter of running NI-Spy when you used Tek's program to see what commands are being sent to get the screen capture. It's also possible that the tek program is simply doing a screen capture of it's windows program. With the serial port, you can try running a program called portmon (do a google search).

I can't really comment on your attachment because I can't compare it to the scope. How did you get this image? Did you use a property node to get the control's image and then save it in LabVIEW? You can also experiment with different graph settings such as interpolation to see if that makes a difference.

[LV-n4p]

Portmon was exactly what I needed. With this tool I was able to see the initialization and the transfer-data. Now I've created a VI basing on a VISA-Session doing the same and it works perfectly and is even able to import more then one screeni with ongoing numbers.

Thanks a lot.

Here is the VI if someone ever has the same problem 🙂