termination on string

[barrys]

Hi

I am collecting data in the form +1.600E+003 . it is being collected successfully using the attached vi. The number appears terminated by a comma as it comes off the instrument (an old HP 35665a signal analyser).

The way the vi reads the data is causing a 'window' of sorts to form and thereby ends up slicing off every data value at the end of the line. Is there anyway to stop this slicing from occuring ? I don't think the vi is recognizing the termination from the instrument.

I have successfully stopped this by increasing the buffer size , which allows the data set to be dumped as one whole string. The string can be successfully filtered by standard string vi's ,however this causes the Labview to crash as the buffer is too big.

Please help

B

[Stefo]

Hi Barrys,

I'm not sure I understand what you need. I have noticed though that you are calling some dll - I'm  afraid that in this case people on this forum can't help you much, as we don't have insight into that dll.

In general, if you have problems with reading numbers, it is worth to change regional options to be English, or at least set proper decimal point separator, and thousand separator. But it might be irrelevant for this 3th party dll.

regards,

stefo

[barrys]

Hi Stefo

Thanks for the reply. I have semi-solved the problem by increasing the size of the buffer . This enables the entire data set to be dumped as on entire string , as opposed to a terminated number . I get the data off but it causes Labview to crash sometimes.

I will try change the language to english , I am sure it is a small problem of interpretation of the termination string.

Another problem is that it is an old instrument talking to a new computer with a non-standard PCI-GPIB card .

If I solve it I will post.

Regards

B

[SynergyMike]

I had a similar problem with an instrument once - might have been the HP 3561A (that antique has bubble memory!).  I was trying to retrieve the data as ASCII, but I kept losing part of it.  I switched to binary trace data and the problem resolved itself (requires extra programming work to read the data block lengths, etc).  Plus transfer was a LOT faster.  Note that you might not be able to use someone else's instrument driver to do this - opting to talk to the instrument directly yourself usually works out better in the end, I think!  Also, I found the 660+ page programming manual for your instrument online - perhaps that would help? 

Regards,

Michael Tracy

Synergy Microwave