[time-nuts] potential source for cheap copy of labview

Dr. David Kirkby (Kirkby Microwave Ltd) drkirkby at kirkbymicrowave.co.uk
Sat Jun 20 20:45:46 UTC 2015


On 20 June 2015 at 04:18, Bob kb8tq <kb8tq at n1k.org> wrote:

> Hi
>
> It is interesting as you go through the various student and home versions,
> just how
> hard it is to figure out what you are (and are not) buying in each case.
> One example
> would be the inclusion (or not) of GPIB capability. One would *assume*
> it’s in there and
> fully functional. At lest for me it’s a “must have” item on the check list.
>
> If anybody comes across a deep dive on what is / is not in each package,
> I’d
> certainly like to see it.
>

Be aware, a lot of older kit is not supported in Labview with the
instrument drivers. I was thinking of buying a copy, and had a labview rep
come around here. I'd sent him in advance of equipment I had that I was
interested in collecting data from. He had nothing that could talk to my HP
70000 series spectrum analyzer. He had a driver written for an 8753 VNA
which was expected to work on an 8720D, but had never been tested. Needless
to say, it could not talk to my 8720D.

Just about anything GPIB in my lab, with the exception of the Agilent power
supplies, they had no instrument drivers for, as it was all too old.

A quick check on time-interval counters, I found there's nothing for the HP
5370B, although there is the Stanford Research SR620.  (At the the the NI
guy came, I never had the SR620).

So if its a hobby, chances are you have older equipment, and support is
probably lacking. Of course you can write your own drivers, but it takes
away a lot of the convenience of Labview.

Somewhat related, there is a GPIB plugin for Octave (open-source MATLAB
clone). I have never used it myself, but might be another cheap (free) way
to get test equipment in a GUI environment.

Dave



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