Keithley 2400 would crash Labview application(VISA)

[YeonsooPark]

Hi,

I'm trying to use the Keithley 2400 with VISA.

However, when I send the command :READ? continuously(every second), it would work a few times(around 10-100) and then stop. When it works, I would get a string consisting of voltage, current, and so on. Both the Labview application and the Keithley device would stop and required restart.

I sent the command with the continuous serial write and read example, the serial settings were 9600, 8, none, 1, none, flow control was off, and read and write were terminated with CR.

Since the Keithley would respond in the expected manner for the first few times before crashing the application, I cannot guess what the problem is.

Can someone help me resolve this issue?

[RavensFan]

Does your application actually crash?  That means it comes to an end with a large Windows dialog box and LabVIEW disappears?

Or are you getting an error that causes the VI to stop running, but you would be cable of hitting the start button again?

If any details on this "crash" like an error message you get?

Your VI is setup to end the while loop if there is an error.  It's very possible you are getting a timeout error.

[YPARK]

It would crash mid-loop, and by crash, I mean that the application stops to respond in any way. Stop button does not work, and I closed it by terminating the application from the task manager(ctrl+alt+del). The Keithley device also stops and has to be restarted after that.

[cstorey]

Keithley has a nice LabVIEW driver for the 2400 and several examples within that show you multiple ways to get measurement data.  You could just use the VISA method you tried, but you would want to be sure that the instrument was expecting to get multiple successive trigger requests.  You don't mention the errors the instrument displays when the software crashe, those would be helpful.

Have a look here - http://sine.ni.com/apps/utf8/niid_web_display.model_page?p_model_id=1583

I would also suggest you update your Keithley 2400 to the latest firmware version.  Older models did have problems with RS232 throughput.

Craig