If you're not tied to Windows, I've written scripts in Perl under Linux
to get time and frequency data out of several HP counters (though not
the 5382). There is an open-source set of drivers and interface
libraries called "linux-gpib" that support virtually all GPIB cards and
USB dongles, and works very well. With it, you can write programs in C,
Perl, Python and I think one or two other languages. I like Perl
because it is designed for parsing data and is an interpreted language
that's pretty straight-forward to use.
Most GPIB commands are really quite basic, just a couple of ASCII
characters perhaps followed by a numeric argument. The big challenge
with older HP instruments is that no two models seem to use the same
command set. But if you have the manual, it's usually pretty easy to
figure out how to make the necessary changes to go from one model to
another.
If you're looking at long-term data collection, I like to use a more
modular approach and capture the data using one simple, character-based,
program that does nothing but read the data and log it into a
timestamped file. I then use other tools to plot and analyze it. When
you're looking at measurements that may extend over hours (or days, or
weeks), that model seems more reliable to me. It also makes the data
capture programming a lot simpler -- most of my data capture programs
are only a couple of hundred (at most) lines of code.
John
----
John Miles said the following on 10/13/2009 09:16 PM:
You don't need NI-Visa for the GPIB Toolkit, but you do need NI488.2
drivers. You can get NI488.2 support with the Agilent I/O libraries.
You won't, however, be able to use the GPIB Toolkit to graph anything
directly, except for the cases that it already handles. There is a time-
and frequency-stability analysis app in the current GPIB Toolkit beta, but
it's meant for the HP 5370 and SR 620 time-interval counters, not
frequency-oriented instruments like the 5328B. (With 10-ns resolution it
would be possible to get some basic low-resolution stability graphs out of
the 5328B, but I don't have an easy way to support it right now.)
You might have a look at Ulrich Bangert's PLOTTER and EZ-GPIB utilities. If
you can write a basic data-logging solution with either Labview, EZ-GPIB, or
the talk.exe/query.exe/listen.exe utilities in the GPIB Toolkit, you can
graph the resulting data with PLOTTER.
Alternatively, you could contact me offline and we could try to get support
for the 5328B into the TI.EXE utility...
-- john, KE5FX
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]]on
Behalf Of Jerome Peters
Sent: Tuesday, October 13, 2009 6:01 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [time-nuts] Getting GPIB to work on HP5382B Universal
Hi Mark,
Thanks for your response, It is good to see that there are some
solutions. However ~$1,250 for the Base version of LabView is a
bit steep for tinkering in the garage.
So it sounds like the NI-Visa and the KE5FX gpib toolkit is all I
need to get a graph of the frequencies measured?
Would the HP/Agilent version of Visa work as well?
Best Regards,
Jerome
KC6ENE
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Mark C. Stephens
Sent: Tuesday, October 13, 2009 4:38 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: [time-nuts] Getting GPIB to work on HP5382B Universal
Hello Jerome,
I use Labview with a NI GPIB card.
There are already data logging modules using the HP5328B for labview.
The code is easily modified and using labview you can debug by
single step etc.
Even if you have access to an old ISA bus GPIB card only, you can
set up a GPIB network server.
All you need is any old machine with an ISA bus and a network card.
You can then access your instruments via NI visa over the TCP/IP.
There is a ton of labview modules kicking around for nearly every
instrument with a GPIB port.
There is even a labview module that runs a 5328B counter and a
59501A DAC to control a crystal oven!
Using NI-Visa, you can also run the KE5FX gpib toolkit which is
provided by our very own John Miles.
The toolkit provides phase noise measurements among other things.
Best regards,
Mark
VK2HMC
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 2009 11:37:34 -0700
From: Jerome Peters <[email protected]>
Subject: [time-nuts] Getting GPIB to work on HP5382B Universal counter
To: "'[email protected]'" <[email protected]>
Message-ID:
<[email protected]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Hello,
I'd very much appreciate any help that I can get in setting up a
HP5328B to communicate over GPIB.
The goal is to log/graph the frequency over time of various VFO's
projects I'm working on.
I am using the Agilent 82357A USB to GPIB Interface, I have the
manual for the counter, so I know some of the basic GPIB commands.
I've downloaded the Agilent IO Libraries Suite 15.5 and it looks
like I can send simple commands to the counter, but I am not
having any luck reading from the counter.
I'd like to use Visual Basic to send commands and receive the
frequency measurements... but need some HP5328B specific libraries?
Thanks/Best Regards,
Jerome
KC6ENE
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