Ocean Optics USB4000 Spectrometer

[Al.abd]

Thanks for your reply Christina.

Yes I have already downloaded the drivers and have taken a look at them. I am new to LabVIEW and was wondering if anybody has done this before (so that I don't have to reinvent the wheel). I am getting into LabVIEW programming but I have very limited time to accomplish this. I made a program to display a spectrum and I also have a good sample of the high speed acquisition function...

My issue is: what functions do I need to put together to program absorbance and fluorescence measurements?

Hope you can help.

Thanks,

Aym 

[Swathi B]

Hi Aym,

As Christina had mentioned, the examples that are installed with the instrument driver are great to get started. The VI Tree.vi also provides all user-callable VIs of the instrument driver in an organized fashion and the context help should detail the function of each.

Any additional analysis you would like to perform will require generic LabVIEW VIs. What functionality in addition to the current examples are you looking for, in particular?

[Al.abd]

Thanks for the reply Swathi,

Yes, I started using the drivers. I tried to connect to the spectrometer using USB, but I am not geeting 'USB' as an option in the visa resource name. This is using the Process Spectrum.vi from the example.

 Can you please or someone else help with getting over this issue.

Thanks, Aym 

[NathanT]

Hello Aym,

      You might find the installation instructions in the Readme useful:

Installation Instructions

• Go to Program Files>>National Instruments>>LabVIEW>>instr.lib>>Ocean Optics 2000 4000>>VISA_USB
• Select the folder for the model of instrument you are using.
• For Windows Vista and Windows 7, use the INF file with _vista in the file name (eg.Ocean Optics USB4000_vista.inf). For XP, use the other INF file.
• To install, right click and select Install.
• NI MAX should be able to detect this instrument after installing the INF file.

The Readme also has some other good information. 

You need to make sure that the device is recognized in MAX before attempting to communicate with it through an ADE.  For more information on instrument driver troubleshooting, please see the Instrument Driver Troubleshooting Guide. 

Let us know how it goes,

NathanT

[Al.abd]

Hello Nathan,

I followed the installation instructions but without any luck. The device can be seen and used through Spectrasuite.  MAX is not showing any 'USB Device' (on the menu to the left), not even the 'USB Devices' heading. Also, the 'Serial & Parallel' sub-menu shows COM3 and LPT1, where COM3 might be my device. Trying to connect to COM3 from the labvVIEW files did not work either. 

I appreciate if you can help me with this.

  Thanks,

Aym

Message Edited by Al.abd on 06-16-2010 12:02 PM

[Jason_P]

Aym,

If you read further back in the posts, others have had this problem.  You CANNOT run Spectrasuite and the NI drivers on the same computer - they are incompatible.  Before you run the NI drivers, you will have to uninstall your spectrometer in the device manager, unplug it, then uninstall the Ocean Optics Spectrasuite package.   Reboot, plug the spectrometer back it, and I believe Windows will start using the NI drivers.  You can check if it worked by opening device manager.  You should see an entry that looks something like this:

 

Yours may look a little different depending on the spectrometer, but the key is that it has to be under "NI-VISA USB devices".

JasonP - CLD 

[James_G1]

You can skip the plugging and unplugging step (if for whatever reason this is not easily accessible) if you right click and select update driver and chose the desired driver manually.

Message Edited by James G on 06-16-2010 01:21 PM

[Jason_P]

Very true...But I always tell people to just unplug it since I usually don't have to explain how to do it! 🙂

JasonP - CLD 

[Al.abd]

Thanks, many, many times, Jason and James. I did that and it's working now! 

I am looking to export the Absorbance measurements taken using Process Spectrum.vi example. Do you have an idea on how I can do that? Is it the Log Spectrum.vi that I need to integrate?

Thanks,

Aym 

[James_G1]

Has anyone played with the nonlinearity correction vi I poseted.  I was hoping for some feedback.