markus4

ZITAT(raul70 @ Nov 26 2008, 07:43 PM) I call it driver madness, because after four month with LabView I decided to write my own drivers for the Keithley instruments. The drivers from Agilent are usefull and for the pulsgenerator I use the original drivers from Agilent (NI driver network). But the Keithley drivers are little bit different (You won't find them in the NI driver network). The original driver (1.0) from Keithley has one vi for one function, so it makes no sense to use it. This is the driver written by myself: Download File:post-11104-1227877162.zip Three month ago I found a new driver (2.1.1) on the Keithley page and this one is much better: Keithley 26xx driver Now I use this driver, it is as usefull for me as my own driver set. The driver for switch matrix was quit old so I wrote a new one: Download File:post-11104-1227877232.zip While writing this I had to handle the Palette Set and the .mnu files and found it really confusing. By the way: The new driver for the 2612 from Keithley has a problem with the Palette Set, this must be corrected before it can be used. For my program I wrote a set of SubVIs: Download File:post-11104-1227880175.zip That was a great deal of work for me. If some one would like to use this vis, you can do so. And if you have some hints for me what can be done better, please tell me. Next part is the overall program structure, the State Machine. Markus

While I am trying to get the GPIB work I also try to communication with the Keithely 2612. Shure this was the clou why I need the GPIB card. After that the communication worked, but only in one direction. The instrument starts a messurement but I also liked to know when the meassurement is done. Here you can read about it: Lava: Problems with VISA OPC/SRQ ... Now this is the working version since May 2008: This was the beginning (or the first problem) of the Part 3: "Driver Madness "

Ok, after one year working with labview I will give a report about my work. I didn't wrote much in this forum, but read in it almost every day. One year ago I got a new job a so I also got a new task: Programming LabView. The project was/is to write a programm for a parametic tester for semiconductor memory devices. The part list for was: 1*Keithley 7001 Switch 1*Agilent 81110 Puls Generator 1*Keithley 2612 Labview, PC, and a manual prober (Suess), cable, GPIB card. I started programming on Labview 8.2.1 then 8.5 (both in german) now I am at 8.5.1 (english version). I think the english version is best because it has less bugs (heard so) and all the help is for the english version. I had much fun with most of the parts on my list. I will start with the GPIB-card: When I started the project the GPIB-card was already bought, it was a Keithley KPCI-488LP. It is cheaper then the NI-cards, but I had much fun with the driver. At the end I formated the harddisk and started with a brand new system. For this card you need the NI-VISA driver and the Keithley card driver. As long as you only use VISA commands it works. I not shure what went wrong the first Time I inastalled the card but on the new system it works. We also have Agilent GPIB-cards (many, my co-worker is a fan ) for this you need the Agilent Visa (is in the agilent driver-suite) and not the NI-VISA. I also tried a NI card...nothing to say to this, it works. The counclusion: If you like to have big trouble, don't bye NI. End of the first part. LabView works, GPIB works. Hope it will be intersting to read about my story. The next part (I need more posts) will be about the communication between the computer and the Keithely 2612.

Ok, the problem is solved. After many trials (Keithley GPIB card, NI card, formatting the harddisk, installing a new clean system) I found this out: The Keithley do not like semicolons or line feeds. With semicolons I get an error, with line feed the instrument only uses the first argument but I didn't get an error. The example I found in the Keithley manual with line feed must be wrong. The discard Service request discards request that are allready in the queue. This vi must be used. I don't like the Keithley Vis Both the NI gpib card and the Keithley gpib card work with VISA Below you can see the working vi. The command I used is the reset() in the vi.

ZITAT(BrokenArrow @ Apr 30 2008, 08:17 PM) Hello Richard, I don't use the Keithley vis either, because these drivers are a quick& dirty implementation. So after some learnings with the drivers I made the decision to write these by myself. The first point is interesting. I found this in the NI examples (enable, then Discard), but this example was for an RS232 connection. Second Point: Keithley do not provide examples (only the drivers) and my VI for the Keithley has no enable VISA service. We have some construction work in our lab but on thursday (hope so) I will try your ideas. An aspects that maybe is a problem: We use an Keithley KPCI-488LP GPIB card. The Keithley driver for this card is needs a passport for VISA, but the card works (but not 100% tested) with the NI GPIB driver. I am not sure if I use the right passport for visa and if visa uses the right base driver. Keithley has drivers (vi) for gpib but I like to use visa, but I can do some tests with this drivers. @Rolf: I belive I tried semicolons to separated the commands and it won't work with the Keithley 2612. In the manual the only describe the a line feed. I have to check this. The Keithley don't use SCPI commands it has a build in interpreter for LUA. I will report if I have some news. Thanks for your help, Markus

Hi, first of all I will introduce my self. This is my first post to the LAVA-Forum. My name is Markus and I am from Germany. I work with LabView since the last six month. My task is to build a system for long time current/volltage meassurements for flash memory. My equipment is a Keithley 2612 source meassure unit and LabView 8.5. I have a question about the SRQ request. In this picture you can see a part of my vi. I like to open a Service Request than start the meassurement on the Keithley and wait until the meassurement complete. I belive that this code should work, but it won't. Most of the time the wait for SRQ vi runs into a time out, but the meassurement on the instrument ends in time. If reset the instrument and also the vi on the first run I get a warning: 1073676292 at VISA: Discard result in IV_var_1.vi->IV with TSP.vi occurred. The next run (without instrument reset) I get an error: time out or "error in Keithley 2612.lvlib:Error Query.vi". I read all the registers of the instrument and the settings for ESE and SRE are ok. A got a signal on ESR (OPC) after the meassurement finished and also on the SRQ bit of the SRR register. So the instrument register had the right setting, but the SRQ-VI didn't identify the set SRQ Bit on the Bus. Something strange I saw: If I delete the VISA_write_OPC in the vi and start it I also see a signal at the OPC and SRQ line. Why? But is this the right way to handel this problem?; Do I have a mistace in my vi?; or is anything else wrong? I hope somebody can please helb me. Markus