DAQ970A and DAQM901A Labview Drivers

[testermike]

I see a lot of posts on this site and Labview drivers for the 34970 but nothing on the newer DAQ970A that replaces it. I started using the DAQ970A with some DAQM901A and DAQM903A cards with some LabVIEW drivers from the Keysight web site a few months ago and am struggling with understanding the 'resolution' setting on the measure resistance VI. There seems to be some suggestion in some documents that you can only enter 1,2,10,20, 100 or 200  but the measure resistance VI lets you enter any value you like and  also crashes it seems if you enter auto for range and don't enter anything for resolution yet that is apparently what you are supposed to do with auto range. Entering DEF or AUTO for resolution which is the other option for when range is Auto does not seem to be an option. So I was wondering if there were any updates to the DAQ970 measure resistance VI as I have one reading of a 200K resistor that seems more noisy than it should be and I wanted to optimize better. However The LabVIEW drivers I started with do not even see to be listed on Keysight's web site anymore and I am now wondering what is going on with LabVIEW driver support for the DAQ970A? Anyone know anything ?

Thanks

[Kyle97330]

The 34970 drivers are here on NI's site.  Maybe they work, maybe they don't...

However, while it's nice to use premade drivers, a lot of time (especially with the newest model of things) you have to write your own drivers.  They do have a programming manual for the new device, so you start by downloading that, finding the VI that isn't working, finding the command it uses, and then finding that in the manual to see what changed.

The other thing you could look for in the manual would be to see if they have any options for backwards compatibility in communications.  I've seen that on other devices that have released much newer revisions before, as an option deep in the settings menu of the device GUI.

[testermike]

We did initially play with the 34970 drivers before we found the 'proper' DAQ970 ones. The 34970 is VISA and the DAQ970 IVI. The 34970 VI tree is more limited in scope functionally compared to the DAQ970 tree. When you drill into the 34970 measure resistance VI block diagram you can get readable labview code but the DA970 measure resistance VI is implemented in an anonymous dll block. Whereas the 34970 VI uses an enumerated type for the resolution setting the DAQ970 just has a 64bit DBL and a single help file comment 1PLC = 0.000003 x PLC. 

[Kyle97330]

Ah, IVI drivers.  My company basically gave up on those a while back.  They're nice in theory, until anything goes wrong and then you have very little debugging or customization you can do.

I think at this point your options are one of:

1. Try different values for the DBL and just see what happens

2. Contact Keysight for support

3. Ditch the IVI drivers and create your own communications VIs manually for everything you need to do

[testermike]

Thanks yes I have been evaluating different value for resolution to see what works best but live in hope a fixed driver might miraculously appear 🙂 It just seems odd they disappeared completely now and I wondered if anyone heard anything why.

[Senkaki]

Hi Mike.

Where can I find the DAQ970 VI tree?

Regards.

[Krapfen]

I have try so much different drivers for this device, as so far the most efficient way I have undercovered is using the very first driver for Agilent 34970a, together with SCPI command instruction, you will succefully config, read data.

This solution only confirmed with Ethernet connection, other interface I didn't verify.

You only need to download from NI Instrument Driver Network the following Driver, nothing else need to be installed

http://sine.ni.com/apps/utf8/niid_web_display.model_page?p_model_id=5547

Before you apply this method, you have to do the following setup on the device:

User Setting-> SCPI ID -> Agilent

[Yavor]

Thank you. Your reply was very helpful