Agilent 4395a impedance analyzer

Question

Hello,
we have an impedance analyzer AG4395a with a GPIB 488.2 that we would like to control using labview. I have been looking for drivers for this instrument and found two. One of them doesn't work and it seems impossible to solve the problem without understanding basic progammation. Moreover, none of the drivers does exactly what we mean to do. It seems that the only two drivers that I can use is the initialize.vi and close.vi. My problem is that I know what we want to do (plot the parameters (R, L, C) of the fitting of the conductance as a function of time) but I have no idea of what type of drivers (if they already exist) I have to use between the initialize.vi and the close.vi. Any help will be welcome because I really feel lost!!!!
Thank you

Answer 1

Dennis Knutson wrote:
Well, that's not a plug and play driver. And, there is no VI called Mode in there.
In general, you would connect the Instrument Handle Out of one VI to the Instrument Handle In of the next VI you want to call. Do the same thing with error out of VI one to error in of VI 2. This is just basic LabVIEW dataflow and you really need a basic understanding of that and LabVIEW in general before you do anything.
Of course some VI have more inputs and outputs than others. It's like parameters in a function call in text based programming languages. For example, the Initialize function has inputs called ID Query and Reset Device. If you want the function to query the instrument for it's ID information, you would wire a Boolean true to this input. If you don't want the instrument to reset, you would wire a boolean false to that input. What you wire and what values you pass will depend on how you want to program the device. In LabVIEW, you should have context help turned on and as you move your mouse over a control/indicator, the help window will discribe what the control/indicator is.
You really do have to understand the instrument, the programming of it, and LabVIEW itself. There are no shortcuts .
It's kind of a weird situation because once you understand the instrument, the programming of it and LabVIEW itself, you don't really need the drivers, because by then you can write your own custom ones. 
Bill
Bill
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