ESP 301 Controller (Newport stages) via Lab view

[samrc]

Does any one have experience with ESP 301 Controller(Newport Stages) control via labview ?

I am trying to find if there are any known issues and things I should be aware of before we start the project.

Thanks

[Cole_R]

Hi samrc,

While I haven't worked with this device before, if you have any specific questions about working with LabVIEW I may be able to point you in the right direction.

Cheers,

[rolfk]

I have only worked with the ESP300 in the past and that was quite a painful experience. It's GPIB interface works rather unreliably unless tickled always in a very specific way. Even then there are still occurrences where the motion axises suddenly seems to behave in an unexpected way, with settings that were absolutely fine before. I would hope that they improved the firmware of the ESP301 significantly but I can't vouch for that.

[samrc]

If you could please point me to some examples of labview code that has been used for controlling stages via ESP controller (or other controller), it could help me get started.

Thanks

SRC

[rolfk]

If you do a search here and on lavag.org for "Newport", "ESP300", or "ESP301" you will find various posts, some of them with some code. Most of that code has rather poor quality but there are some goodies.

[jyan]

Hi, Dear Cole R.,

I am new to Labview system control, but I am very interested at learning it. At the moment, I have a ESP 301 controller in my hand, and I have made the joystick work. My next step plan is to develop a labview application to control 3 step motors. HOPE YOU CAN HELP ME. 

Here are the questions in front of me.

1. I downloaded ESP 301 drivers and copied it to C:\Program Files\National Instruments\LabVIEW 2011\instr.lib\Newport ESP301. When I open tool-instrumentation- find instrument drivers, the esp301 is not listed on the "Connected Instruments". On the other side, it shows as "Newport ESP301 (COM4)" in COMPUTER-Device Manager-Ports. Am I right?

2. Any introductary manaul or document available for starters? Thanks you very much for your attention. 

Best regards,

Jyan

[Dennis_Knutson]

A serial instrument is not supposed to be detected. I don't think an attempt is even tried. If your driver is installed, you are good to go.

[HollyBerry]

This is a third party driver so National Instruments does not have further information about how to operate it. It looks like there may have been some shipping examples that came with it. I would recommend checking your example finder (Help>>Find Examples) to see if there is any example code you could review.

[flyingstarme]

The same problem to us

we connect the ESP 301 controller by using  USB

however, no USB signals in Max, only COM4 seem to connect ESP 301

The tough problem is that, we can not controll the ESP at all, 

The Baud rate is very strange for ESP, it is 921600

Is there anyone have the similar experience, and how to control ESP 301 by using USB in Labview?

Thank you 

Jianli

[Dennis_Knutson]

The USB connection is a virtual com port so that is an expected result in MAX. I don't believe the instrument supports the idn command. You have to read the manual to see what the command set actually is and only use something listed.