LabVIEW and SR-510 lock-in amplifier

[CSULA_physics]

Hello, am a grad student at calstate los angeles and am working on a project
using LabVIEW 5 and a Stanford Research 510 lock in amplifier.

I need to read the sensitivity of the amplifier through an IEEE card. What
happens is that only one out of three consecutive readings of the
sensitivity (or gain #) is correct, the other two giving wrong values.

I wonder if I need to flush the buffer after each reading or if the MODE of
the GPIB write/read function has to be a specific mode or if there is a way
to find out how many bytes need to be read.
Thank you

ucaccia@calstatela.edu

[Ryan_M]

Have you tried using the instrument driver for this device? You can download a copy from:
http://zone.ni.com/idnet97.nsf/9b2b33e1993d877786256436006ec498/922fef74544cf345862568ab005fba24?OpenDocument

To answer your question though, you do not need to flush your GPIB buffer.

One thing I might try is to use the Interactive Control Utility (IBIC) to test the communication. If you are able to write and read successfully from IBIC then there may be some higher level problem within your code. If you do not get the expected data in IBIC then there might be a hardware or instrument problem.

Ryan Mosley