GPIB users/experts/programmers, step in here please

A thread where the concepts, usage of and user experience with this signalling standard are discussed.

What's your favorite stand-alone controller? Interface card? PC-based software package?

As for me, I'm looking for details on programming the Tektronix TM5000-series mainframes and their related plug-ins. I don't feel like spending $3500 for LabVIEW and am seriously considering the development of an embedded, dedicated controller which will handle, say, a half-dozen devices simultaneously. Maybe two signal generators, a set of relays in an MI5010/50M40 setup...and a 50M30/50M10 card in same, along with a frequency counter or DMM for the sampling functions. The idea (one of many) is to develop an automated test suite for receiver or transceiver alignment.

Is GPIB even used these days? HP standard from wayback, as I recall, but that's about all I know.

I have been trying to find a macro that will read from a GPIB into an excel spreadsheet. No luck yet. But yeah. GPIB has been around for many decades.

I have a National Instruments PCI-based GPIB adapter that I bought off of Ebay, along with a USB-GPIB controller that I bought from Abdul Nizar, at his company: Prologix. I either use the tools provided by John Miles' KE5FX GPIB Toolkit, or I write the C-code myself to run under either Linux or Windows.

My interests have been in the control of some Hewlett Packard equipment that I have. Some of it doesn't have front panel user controls, so it has to be run over GPIB.

P.S., I forgot to mention a good GPIB overview page on Didier Juges' website: KO4BB. KO4BB is a current member of the same amateur radio club I joined way back when I was a long-haired, 15 year-old kid: The Playground Amateur Radio Club, W4ZBB, in Ft. Walton Beach, FL.

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Originally Posted by X-Rated

I have been trying to find a macro that will read from a GPIB into an excel spreadsheet. No luck yet. But yeah. GPIB has been around for many decades.

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Here's an old 2003 document that might be interesting. I just skimmed through it, but it looks like they are doing what you are trying to do: http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA420445

I've never programmed an interface to GPIB. Believe it or not, I never ran into anything in a radio station that ever used it until three years ago, when a brand-new, fully VoIP-based broadcast audio console we bought used GPIB for remote starts and tallies.

I have written device drivers for parallel and serial ports though. Wish I could be more help.

I'm not so much looking for device drivers as the top-level application suites which actually control the attached peripherals. As pointed out above: NI, Prologix and a host of others offer a number of adapters along with device drivers that can be used in conjunction with a PC for device control.

It's the application side of the stack which is a little thin...

Just shot an e-mail off to John, 'FX inquiring as to the support of TM5000 peripherals and offered to write some middleware if they're not currently supported.

Here's a potential embedded solution:

http://forums.parallax.com/showthrea...er-speaks-GPIB

The cool thing about a Propeller is cost ($89 for the complete development kit) and the fact that it supports VGA/keyboard/mouse (via $13 add-on). The wheels: They're turning. :chin:

Ah, well if all you need to do is push some data to a hardware port.... Not too difficult. Documentation on what to send where to do what, is all you need to get started. Almost any programming platform will work. I did direct interfacing to hardware ports with VB for years. Truly easy if the device comes with its own drivers for your O/S.

As for embedded... Yeah, $89 is cheap for a programmer. I wonder if Arduino does GPIB.

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Originally Posted by wb5ydk

Here's an old 2003 document that might be interesting. I just skimmed through it, but it looks like they are doing what you are trying to do: http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA420445

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WOW. Thanks. This is what I needed.

WHOOOSH!

That's the sound of this thread going WAY over my head.