Serial Communication - Double Ballbar

[Phil747]

Hi,
I've just passed through "Labview Basics 1: Introduction" and now I'm trying to communicate with a Ballbar (from Renishaw) through a serial port. After having tried severals examples from the manual about VISA communication, I've downloaded the following example from the website: "Basic_Serial_Write_and_Read.vi" and tried to run it after having configured the properties (baud rate, parity, ...). I sent *IDN? and I always get the Error -1073807339, which is "Timeout expired before operation completed". I'm unable to find why I get this error, and I get the same trying to communicate using MAX. I'm wondering if anyone tried something similar with a ballbar and if anyone has an idea about what would be my problem. Thanks for an
y help.

Philippe, École Polytechnique student

[Dennis_Knutson]

Before doing any LabVIEW code, first verify communication with a terminal emulator program such as Hyperterminal or ProComm. If that works with the command, then check the user manual and see if the instrument requires a termination character at the end of each command. This is usually required and might be a carriage return or line feed character. In MAX, try putting a \r (carriage return) or \n (line feed) at the end of your command. In LabVIEW, in order to send the control character, you can use the constants on the string palette or turn on \ Codes Display for the string control and enter it there.