Hi everyone,
I'm trying to get a SRS model SR720 LCR meter (manual on this page) working with LabView, connecting it to my PC with an Agilent 82357A GPIB/USB interface (manual on this page). I'm running MAX version 14.0, and NI-VISA version 14.0. I'm running LabView version 13.0f2, 32 bit.
I followed the directions on this page, and I'm pretty confident I can communicate with my LCR meter, because I can go to NI MAX->GPIB0::17::INSTR under "devices and interfaces", then go to the VISA test panel, go to the I/O tab, and I can enter a few commands from the SR720 manual, like changing the frequency, and I see the light on the LCR meter change to what I just told it to do. Here is a picture, just to illustrate it:
Also, if I do the *IDN? command, it returns "
9: Write Operation (*IDN?) Return Count: 5 bytes 10: Read Operation Return Count: 41 bytes StanfordResearchSystems,SR720,08087,1.03\n
So, that's good too. I also made the alias of this device "MyLCRmeter", but that shouldn't matter for now.
Now I'm trying to get it to work in a more usable way. The SR7xx drivers that LabView found for me came with a couple sample programs, one called "Getting Started.vi". I tried to just simply see if it worked, changing the "instrument descriptor" field to "GPIB0::17::INSTR", since that's the one that seemed to be the right device in MAX. Here is a picture of the front panel of "Getting Started.vi":
Trying to run it like this gave me this error (code -1073807343):
Old VISA Open in SR715/720 Initialize.vi->SR715/720 Getting Started.vi
Doing a bit of searching on these forums, I found these few threads (1 2 3), which seem to tell me that, since this program was written, the way you open VISA has changed. In the 2nd of those links, one guy said:
You just have to replace the Old VISA Open function with the VISA Open that is on the Instrument I/O>VISA>VISA Advanced palette. When you do that, the wire to the string that was used for the resource name will be broken. Delete the string and make the actual VISA Resource Name visible on the front panel. Wire the VISA Resource Name control to the connector pane where the string control was (upper left connection).
So, I went into the sub-VI Initialize.vi, and did that. Here is a picture of what the front panel and block diagram of the sub-VI Initialize2.vi (I changed the name in case I screwed things up, but I'm pretty sure the new one is the one being called by Getting Started.vi) looked like before I changed anything (you can see the Old VISA Open):
and here it is after replacing that with the regular VISA Open, deleting the instrument descriptor string and replacing it with a VISA resource, and connecting that to the VISA Open:
However, as you can see in the image above, and it seems like someone else had this problem in the 2nd thread linked above, I don't see my device listed in the drop-down menu (even if I refresh), only "LPT1" (I don't even know what that is):
No, I wasnt able to select the visa resource from the pull down menu. somehow it seems disabled or something.
If I just enter the VISA resource name from MAX manually, GPIB0::17::INSTR, and save and try running that, I get the error(code -1073807346):
VISA Open in SR715/720 Initialize2.vi->SR715/720 Getting Started.vi
So I'm not sure where to go from there, or why it's not in the drop down menu to begin with. I'm sorry if I've missed something but I've searched about as far as I can go. If I had to guess, maybe one thing could be that in MAX, under Tools->NI-VISA->VISA Options->My System->Conflict manager, I have both Agilent VISA and NI VISA enabled; I know sometimes problems arise from conflicts between different software fighting over the same hardware. Is this okay, or do I need to change it?
Thank you and please let me know if there is any other code/screenshots I could provide that could help!