Labview vs. Keithley 2612

[markus4]

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.

[Neville D]

QUOTE (raul70 @ Nov 26 2008, 02:26 AM)

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 think there is a way to make the Agilent card work with LV as well. Don't remember now (its been about 10 yrs since I used one).. We had a customer who standardised on VEE+Agilent VXI hardware and we had to make his stuff work with LV.

If I remember right, you just use the traditional GPIB functions (not VISA) and it works. Something about replacing a tulip dll with the NI version and everything is fine.. check the NI website if you need to make it work.

Neville.

[markus4]

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 "

[markus4]

ZITAT(raul70 @ Nov 26 2008, 07:43 PM)

"Driver Madness "

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