keithley 6430

[kel]

Good Day,

Does anyone know how to use the instrument drivers of the above mentioned instrument?

I am currently trying to replace Keithley 236 Sourcemeter with Keithley 6430 sourcemeter. However,inside the LABview programme that i am using, I am experiencing difficulty in replacing the K 236's VIs with those of K 6430.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

thanks

[wha@atmel]

Hi Kel,

I know a little bit the SMU's from KEITHLEY - but unfortunately not  the one you mentioned..........

Find some hints about the 6430 @:   http://torque.oncloud8.com/archives/cat_keithley_6430.html 

Hope this helps

Werner

[kel]

Thanks for the reply.

The URL didn't help much.

What i basically would like to do is to

source a fixed voltage and measure the corresponding current.

AND source a fixed current and measure the corresponding voltage.

Currently, my program uses SMU236 to do that but i would like to change it to 6430 because it has a bigger range but i'm unable to do so.

[Emilie S.]

Hi Kel:

It looks like the only drivers available for this instrument were written by Keithley.  I downloaded them and it really just looks like GPIB code.  Unfortunately since I'm not familiar with the instrument itself and don't know the commands I'm afraid I will be of little to no help here.  I would recommend that you contact Keithley for support as they will know a lot more about these particular drivers.

Regards,

Emilie S.
Applications Engineer
National Instruments 

[kel]

I have contacted keithley b4 and they said they don't give support for labview codes. They only give support to the use of the instrument manually.

[JLS]

Hello,

Generally instrument drivers have the following major categories:

initialize/open, configure operation, perform measurement, utility functions, close

If you don't have a driver, then you'll need to program using an API which will interface your instrument; this requires that you have knowledge of the commands that the instrument understands; the instrument manual and the manufacturer are really the only place to obtain such information.  Many instruments respond to common commands, such as *idn?, *tst?, and *rst, (which perform an instrument query, self test, and reset respectively).  Usually a question mark being sent implies that the instrument will reply, which means you'll want to read after you write the command.

If you are only looking for a subset of the instrument's functionality, you should be able to program using an interface API (such as VISA) fairly easily.  Of course if you have the driver, that will be easier and faster.  Note that the above "major categories" are generally in the order in which they are called in a given program.

Feel free to repost if you have further questions, and we'll try to help you further!

Best Regards,

JLS

[kel]

Hmm... I still cant seem to control the instrument. I couldn't attach the labview program that i wrote..

The outline of it is

I first use the initialise icon [Keithley 6430 Initialize.vi]

then i connect it to the source current icon [Keithley 6430 DCI Source Config.vi]

then i connect it to the measure voltage icon [Keithley 6430 DCV Measure Config.vi]

then i connect it to the display icon. [Keithley 6430 Display Read.vi]

I got my drivers form the url : http://www.keithley.com/data?asset=3964

Thanks for ur reply!

Message Edited by kel on 07-18-2005 01:43 AM

[JLS]

Hello,

Ok, try a visa open, write, read, and close in series; write the string *idn? and create an indicator to observe the resulf to the read operation, and specify reading back 100 bytes (or something large; the instrument likely uses EOI termination so the read will complete without error even if there are not 100 bytes returned).  Also, use a string constant (instead of a VISA resource control) to wire the resource name input to the VISA open function; put the exact VISA resource descriptor there (for an instrument with primary address 3, and a board populated as index 0, this would be GPIB0::3::INSTR).

Does this return a description of the instrument?  What functions are you interested in the instrument performing?  If it's only a few, you can just use VISA functions to directly command the instrument to do what you'd like!

Let me know the results, and we'll get to communicating!

Thanks and looking forward to your repost!

JLS

[mikeporter]

I looked at the library you posted and, aside from using old GPIB drivers, the code isn't in bad shape--I've seen a lot worse from instrument vendors. You should be able to run the subvi "Keithley 6430 Initialize.vi" out of that library interactively. Make sure you have the right GPIB address specified and you should get something back...

Mike...

[yorianny]

Hi! i need to do a IHM with the Keithley 6430 and i have to use the port GPIB but the national instruments doesn't provide the drivers , so i was trying with the drivers that i found in the Keithley on the internet but it doesn't work. there is a error in the  initialize.vi and the code is number 6 but i don't have any idea that it means.

if you have any advice...i would really appreciate it.

Thanks