How do I set the Burst Period in LabVeiw for an Agilent 33250A Function Generator.

[marshri]

I am trying to set up the burst function in LabView 7.1 for the Agilent 33250A Function generator. I am using the IVI driver for this instrument. To set up the burst on this instrument, I must give a "burst count", which is the number of burst cycles for the chosen frequency. You must also give the burst period, which is the start time of the fisrt burst to the start of the next burst. My problem is that the 33250A.LLB does not contain the required configuration VI. If I look at the Instrument I/O, IVI class instruments, Function Generator, I find that the burst function is not even listed.

Without the burst period VI, I cannot see how the feature  can be implemented in LabView using the supplied drivers.

Will I have to go about it the hard way and create a program that does this burst function using all generic GPIB commands?

Thanks to  all who respond,

Ricky Marsh

[Dennis_Knutson]

Where did you get your driver? On NI's instrument driver download site, the IVI driver for the 33250 is the HP33120 and that has burst functions and the IVI class driver for FGEN has burst mode for IviFgen Configure Operation Mode and there is also the IviFgen Configure Burst Count function.

[marshri]

I got the IVI driver from the NI down load site. Yes I know that the IVI driver is listed as the HP33120 Function generator. When I did a serch for "33250A LabView Driver", the 33120 came  up. The text said that this driver is used for the 33120a, and 33250A. I also can see that some of the burst functions are listed. What is not listed and is most important is the "burst period".  Let me give you an example, if I want to give a 13MHz burst for 10us on and 10us off, I set the instrument for for a frequency of 13MHz, and an amplitued. I then set the Burst count. In this case it would be 137 counts. I  set an internal trigger. and last a burst period of 20us, ( 10 on 10 off ). I have already done this from the front panel of the instrument to verify how it is done. I also followed the instructions in the manual. When I went to write a  simple program to do it in LabView, I found that the Configuration for Burst Period was not listed. Without it, this function will not work. I have been looking at the Burst commands in the manual. The burst period is one of the required commands. I am starting to think that this feature was forgotten about, or was not avaliable in the 33120a and when the driver was tested with the 33250A, nobody thought to test this feature. I could be wrong. I hope this is the case.

Ricky Marsh.

[Dennis_Knutson]

Okay, what confused me was your original mention of 33250.llb. It's very possible that the burst period was forgotten about. It's also possible that the function was not written because, as far as I can tell, burst period is not defined in the IVI Class for function generators. All of the functions in the class are defined by http://www.ivifoundation.org/ and they pick those functions that are common to the majority of the defined instrument types. For any command not in the IVI Class driver, you can use the hp33120a Write Instrument Data that is in hp33120a.llb. Of course, when you use the instrument specific driver instead of the IVI Class driver, you've made the program specific to a 33250 and removed one of the reasons for using an IVI driver in the first place. If you don't care about using IVI, you could look to see whether the LabVIEW driver has the functions you need.

[marshri]

My mistake in calling it the 33250.llb when infact it is the 33120.llb. As far as I can tell, this type of burst feature is only on the 33220 and 33250 function generators. I just looked at a new Tektronix Fgen that we have, and it does not perform this type of burst function. So it looks as though this is not a standard feature, which explains why it was not included in the IVI driver that I down loaded.

I did just down load a driver from Agilent. It is the 33250 IVI-COM. It does  not look  like a regular labview instrument driver so now I have to figure out what is is and what it does. I am not sure if it will help me.

Thanks for your help,

Ricky Marsh

[Albert.Geven]

I strongly advise to look at the labview driver NOT IVI on the NI site.
It is much easier to debug than an IVI driver and sure easier than an IVI-COM driver.

The 33250 driver especially the projectstyle version is good to use but a pity projectstyle only works in lv8
but there are lower versions available that are also not bad.

[Rajan_77]

Hi

I am using agilent 33250A. I downloaded the dreivers from http://sine.ni.com/apps/utf8/niid_web_display.download_page?p_id_guid=E3B19B3E9066659CE034080020E748...

But i could not find any driver to set the time for the points to generate arbitrary waveform. HELP !!!!

[Dennis_Knutson]

duplicate post. Please try not to post the same identical question to any of the boards. You should also not hijack unrelated threads.