Agilent 8720 Program Help

[Joe O'N]

I am new to Labview and I am looking for some help regarding the programing of an Agilent 8720 VNA. The older Agilent manuales have programs that are written in Quick C with a reference to a header file <chpib.h>. I am trying to cross the older Agilent commands to the Labview/CVI environment and have been looking at the <gpib.h> and <visa.h> headers without much progress.

Is there a cross from the Quick C hpib commands from Agilent to the Labview environment?

[menchar]

This is the Lab Windows / CVI forum, not the LabView forum, but you're in the right place it seems.

It's easiest if you understand how the GPIB works, independent of the SW development environment.  Everyone tries to make GPIB programming idiot proof, but there's no substitute for really knowing ieee 488.1 and ieee 488.2 IMHO.

Then, you can understand the QuickC functions Vs. the CVI library functions - it's the same GPIB underneath.

I'd suggest getting a GPIB tutorial and going through it.  I'm sure there's one on this site.

gpib.h does expose the prototypes and constants for the CVI gpib library, but you'd be better off using CVI help and using the GPIB library reference to learn about the various functions.

It's a bit confusing because there's usually a couple of ways to do the same thing with CVI & gpib.  You can use low-level gpib driver calls which are closely related to specific ieee 488.1 functionality, or you can you the ieee 488.2 messaging layer to manipulate things.  It's all in the same reference, CVI's   GPIB/GPIB 488.2 Library.

And when it comes to drivers, it can be quite confusing there too.   I'll defer to NI on explaining those to you 🙂

Menchar


Message Edited by menchar on 11-06-2007 01:45 PM

[Ted_H]

Hi Joe,

In addition to Menchar's recommendations, I would also suggest looking at the drivers available for your device on NI's Instrument Driver Network.  I did a quick look and found drivers for five different Agilent 8720 models.  The drivers available for each model include drivers specific to both LabVIEW and LabWindows/CVI. 

I'd highly recommend you at least take a look at this drives to see how to architect your communication with the device, or just use these drivers in your application.  I hope this helps.

Ted