Help Setting Up Anritsu MS9710C

[simoncoul]

Hello,

I've very new to labview, I have recieved a summer job and am currently trying to produce a labview program for the Anritsu MS9710C.   The program just needs to be able to graph and save the wavelength vs. intensity.   I am stuck on how to get this going and was woundering if someone would be able to tell me which VI's to use and in which order.  I currently have the "MS9710 Optical Spectrum Analyzer Driver" and "MS97XX Optical Spectrum Analyzer IVI Driver" but I was reading another post that said it is better to stick with the orginal drivers and not to use IVI's if possible as the normal drivers are easier to work with.

Thanks in advance.

[simoncoul]

I am also using labview 7.1.

Thanks

[simoncoul]

Ok, I have a basic idea of how to get the waveform.   I intialized the OSA through the GPIB, then I set the start and stop wavelengths.  I do a single sweep, and then I get stuck here... I do not know how to get the arrays of the wavelength and the level so that I can graph them.   The current setup that I have(and attached) only takes the centre wavelength which I believe is this case was the peak wavelength as well.   Any help would be very appriceated.

Thanks

[Robert M]

Since I don't have the instrument I can't tell you exactly what to do, but from looking at the VI's I can give you a few tips.  You are using the sweep subVI then calling the MS9710 Application.vi which does its own sweep again.  You can see this by double-clicking on it.  Try copying the contents of the MS9710 Application.vi onto the main block diagram and removing one of the duplicate sweeps.  You can also try replacing your peak search1 with MS9710 Read Memory Data.vi to read all the data.

Hope this helps and good luck!

[simoncoul]

Ok, I have read around a bit more and have almost got this OSA(Optical Spectral Anayzer) labview working.   Right now it does a sweep of the spectrum I want but the output data is the intensity with respect to time(which is just an arbitrary time).   Does anyone know how I can get the OSA to spit out the Intensity with respect to wavelength, it seems like a very simple thing to do but I just can't figure it out.

Thank you

Simon

I have attached the VI that I have made so far, it intalizes - does a sweep - then reads the data from the memory of the OSA(the area to read is set by the conditional data in the read data VI).

[simoncoul]

I have figured out how to outset my graph so that my graph wavelength matches with the intensity.   But the saved data is given each of the points a time value.   Is there a way to change it such that instead of telling the time of each point it will give just the point number(then I can offset it and add a multiplier to change it to the wavelength that I need)

This way seems a bit strange though as I would figure that they would just have a module made so that it would output a 2-D array with the wavelength vs intensity(since that is what this device does) so it could be easily graphed and the data could be easily saved.


thanks

[simoncoul]

I've almost got it,  does anyone know how to seperate a 1D array that is had up of two clusters?   It's very strange output to get but I can't figure it out.   If I unbundle it I just get all the points in the array seperated, but each point is still a cluster?

Any help would be great

Thanks

[JLS]

Hello,

I don't think I understand the data structure you're trying to unwrap.  It sounds like you might have an array of clusters, where each cluster contains two numerics (probably doubles), although your statement "1D array that is had up of two clusters" is unclear to me.  My guess is that this is the case however, and that those represent (x,y) coordinates/points which you would like to plot.  Fortunately, this structure can immediately be plotted to an XY-Graph!  The XY-Graph can take 3 types of structures:

1). a cluster of two arrays, where the first array is an array of x-coordinates and the second array is an array of corresponding y-coordinates

2). and array of clusters, where the cluster contains two numerics; the first numeric is an x-coordinate and the second is the corresponding y-coordinate.  This is exactly the case you have!

3). (8.0 and later only) The final structure accepted by the XY-Graph is an array of complex values, where the XY-Graph is now to be interpreted as the Complex plane, where of course the real parts of the complex values are plotted on the x-axis and the imaginary parts on the y-axis.

If you need to unravel the data for some reason, you can use the array index or array subset functions to get parts of an array, and the unbundle and unbunble by name functions to pull apart your clusters.

I hope this helps!

Best Regards,

JLS

[simoncoul]

Alrite, the program did work but only under certain conditions which is not what I need.    The OSA has a floppy disk drive which it saves the files from and that is the data I need, but on the old OSA the floppy stopped working and that would like for it to be able to save to the hard drive of the computer.   There is a VI that triggers the OSA to save to the floppy disk and there has to be some way I can alter is so it saves it to the hard drive instead.   If you have any ideas of how to do this please let me know.


Thank You

Simon

[pj456]

`Hi, what is the use of the application.vi?

And if I want to capture the graph from the analyzer, I do it by connecting the graph function from the labview block diagram palette?

your infomations will be very helpful to me. thanks in advace.

pj