connecting to tektronix through serial port with labview 7.0

[david]

I am having difficulty communicating with any device with labview
through the serial port. The example VI that labview provides for
serial communication returns a timeout error as do all of the
tektronix labview files downloaded from their site. the serial port
can communicate properly with executables but i need to be able to use
labview to communicate with an rs232 device. how can i configure a VI
in labview to communicate with the oscilloscope? is VISA the
appropriate way to write the VI or not?

[Brian_Powell]

VISA is the appropriate way, and it's what all those instrument drivers are using.

First, I would check the configuration of the oscilloscope to ensure that it's configured to communicate over the serial port. (And you should check the configuration of the baud rate, parity, flow control, etc.) Make sure these settings match the instrument driver.

You might also want to make sure that you have the latest firmware installed on your scope. I recall some problems with a particular Tek scope where it had a lot of problems with serial communications until we upgraded the firmware. Look on http://www.tek.com for firmware updates.

It might also help us to know what model of scope you have, so that we could say whether we've tried that particular setup ours
elves.

I hope this helps.

Brian

[david]

Brian Powell wrote in message news:<506500000005000000AB9E0100-1079395200000@exchange.ni.com>...
> VISA is the appropriate way, and it's what all those instrument
> drivers are using.
>
> First, I would check the configuration of the oscilloscope to ensure
> that it's configured to communicate over the serial port. (And you
> should check the configuration of the baud rate, parity, flow control,
> etc.) Make sure these settings match the instrument driver.
>
> You might also want to make sure that you have the latest firmware
> installed on your scope. I recall some problems with a particular Tek
> scope where it had a lot of problems with serial communications until
> we upgraded the firmware. Look on http://www.tek.com for firmware
> upda
tes.
>
> It might also help us to know what model of scope you have, so that we
> could say whether we've tried that particular setup ourselves.
>
> I hope this helps.
>
> Brian

I downloaded the new firmware for the scope. it is the TDS 3014. all
of the configurations match (9600 baud rate, 8 data bits, parity none
etc). Still i get that timeout error at the read function every time.

Thanks
-Dave

[Brian_Powell]

I've got a 3054B (a pretty similar model) that I can try this out with. (I have to go borrow it back from the original owner.)

In the meantime, you could examine some obvious things. Are you sure your cable works? If you haven't done it already, you might try using HyperTerminal to send "*IDN?" and see if the instrument responds. This will demonstrate whether your cable is working correctly and prove that the computer can actually talk to the thing.

When I get the 3054B back, I'll try it out, too.

Brian

[Matt Meredith]

I was able to test out the TDS 3054B with the LabVIEW tktds3k driver (over RS-232). I reset the instrument to use default communication settings, and everything is working fine.

Note: Only the Getting Started.vi is 'runable.' The other application examples need an Initialize and Close to actually be a running application.

What version of VISA are you using? You may want to upgrade to ver. 3.1 if you don't already have it.

Matt