Hi!
Some years ago I made a DLL for the 53132A Counter. With this DLL, the 53132A Counter, the NI GPIB and a gate time of 40mSec we can make a single frequency measurement within ~60mSec.
We use the counters on the machines in our crystal tuning fork production, speed an reliability are a absolute must!
On Monday I got the first 53210A Counter and I'm not able to get it to work :-(
It seems not possible to build up the complete programming string and send this string to the counter.
So I tried the following programming sequence:
The counter reports no error after this code.
Sometimes the Reset Function is not able to reset the counter. I have to switch off and on the counter (that is NOT acceptable).
It seems that the commands must be in a strict order.
ex. If I send the "TRIG:SOUR BUS" command after "CALC:STATE OFF" then the question "TRIG:SOUR?" after the above code returns "IMM".
My first try to trigger a measurement was with the GPIB GET command (ibtrg) -> "trigger ignored".
Then I did "INIT;*TRG;FETC?" then I could make a measurement. But it's so slow that it's unusable.
Since I can not believe that Agilent produces a Counter which is unusable, I must do something completly wrong.
Can please somebody or other help me to get this thing to work?
Best regards
Walter
Some years ago I made a DLL for the 53132A Counter. With this DLL, the 53132A Counter, the NI GPIB and a gate time of 40mSec we can make a single frequency measurement within ~60mSec.
We use the counters on the machines in our crystal tuning fork production, speed an reliability are a absolute must!
On Monday I got the first 53210A Counter and I'm not able to get it to work :-(
It seems not possible to build up the complete programming string and send this string to the counter.
So I tried the following programming sequence:
The counter reports no error after this code.
Sometimes the Reset Function is not able to reset the counter. I have to switch off and on the counter (that is NOT acceptable).
It seems that the commands must be in a strict order.
ex. If I send the "TRIG:SOUR BUS" command after "CALC:STATE OFF" then the question "TRIG:SOUR?" after the above code returns "IMM".
My first try to trigger a measurement was with the GPIB GET command (ibtrg) -> "trigger ignored".
Then I did "INIT;*TRG;FETC?" then I could make a measurement. But it's so slow that it's unusable.
Since I can not believe that Agilent produces a Counter which is unusable, I must do something completly wrong.
Can please somebody or other help me to get this thing to work?
Best regards
Walter
Thank you for purchasing the new 53210A counter. I’m sorry the instrument is not cooperating.
There are 53210A commands that are sequence dependent; however, in the code you provided there are no such dependencies. I executed the commands in your sequence and queried the trigger source. ‘BUS was returned as expected. Sending TRIG:SOUR BUS immediately after CALC:STATE:OFF also returned the correct source:
-> *rst;:calc:state off;:trig:sour bus;:trig:sour?
<- BUS
Regarding the “trigger ignored” error, the 53210A must be set to the ‘wait-for-trigger state’ before triggers are accepted. The INITiate:Immediate command does this. The commands you used to configure the counter occur while the counter is in its ‘idle state’. Sending INIT moves the counter to the ‘wait-for-trigger’ state. When a trigger is received the counter is now in the ‘triggered’ state. When the signal from the specified gate source is received, the measurement is taken.
I am concerned that the Reset function on occasion is not able to reset the counter. Can you provide more information on what is occurring before and after the reset is issued?
You mentioned writing a DLL for the 53132A counter. Were you aware of the compatibility mode feature of the 53210A? The 53200A series counters will eventually replace the 531xxA counters. To help in the migration to the new counters, the 53200A models are compatible with the 531xxA models as follows:
53210A 53181A
53220A 53131A
53230A 53132A
In compatibility mode the 53200A series counter can execute the commands of its corresponding 531xxA counter. This allows the 53200A counters to be integrated into systems currently containing 531xxA counters and leverage existing code.