Has anyone tried controlling a keithley 220 from VEE?
Thanks Mike,
Ive been trying for a while but can't figure out how to. We have the 220 and a few 6221 for low current sourcing. The 6221 is easy but the 220 is so old trying to get vee pro 9.32 to talk to it through scpi is tough.
It's certainly pre-SCPI! I found a programming manual at
http://exodus.poly.edu/~kurt/manuals/manuals/Keithley/KEI%20230%20Program.pdf
p4-7 ( page 29 of the PDF ) is a bit bereft of examples ( apart from lots about HP-IB control and SRQ ) but a couple shown at the top of the page should work... may need to add an X at the end to execute the command. I'd try sending it something like
I7.5E-3
V6.3
and maybe
X
if need be
HTH,
Mike
Thanks Mike, where would I enter those commands seems like silly question but Ive used the IO from vee and couldn't get it to respond. The IO manager sees it kind of as it comes up with a scientific notation description for a name. Been banging my head for a while.
So obviously you can see the instrument in the VEE Instrument Manager list; right-click on the device and select Create Direct I/O Object.
That gives you a transaction box which you've probably seen before. Note that the I/O object [box] should not say NOT LIVE otherwise ( probably obviously ) it won't talk to your instrument. The default address for that instrument is 12, so that will be seen in the object's title bar. In the I/O object, double-click the top line. Overwrite the 'a' with something like "I7.5E-3V6.3F1X" including the quotes, so when you've OK'd that, it should read WRITE TEXT "I7.5E-3V6.3F1X" EOL.
I think it should understand that as it says you can string all of the commands together. F1 turns on the output and the X at the end tells it to execute the commands.
Run the program with that I/O object and hopefully the instrument should do something. If not I'd try just one of the items e.g. "I7.5E-3X".
I'm pretty sure I have. The work I was doing was for another company at the time so unfortunately I don't have the code. As I recall it took me about 10 minutes to prototype a test which used a staircase compliance voltage until the device under test broke down ( when the low current limit prevented damage ), so I think it should be straightforward. I've used quite a Keithley devices over the years and I would say they are generally 'well behaved' as programmable device and the documentation is good.
Mike Watts