| The Electrical Engineering Undergraduate Laboratory is equipped with test measuring instruments made by Hewlett Packard (HP). The function generator (FG), digital multimeter (DMM), and the oscilloscope are connected by a instrumentation bus called GPIB (General Purpose Instrumentation Bus). This connection between instruments is similar to the ethernet connection found in computers. GPIB allows the instruments to exchange information between the GPIB controller and the test instruments. The bench instruments are connected to the PC through a GPIB controller card installed in the PC expansion slot.
The communication on GPIB is achieved through a commands set that is available and documented in the user's guide of the instruments. The GPIB commands are standard and like C or Pascal completely independent of the type of computer. (Mac, PC, Sun etc.). GPIB is used when one intends to control and acquire the data from the instrument.
Use of GPIB also requires understanding of the commands and syntax. However, using software like Benchlink allows the control of the instruments from a PC without understanding of the GPIB syntax. The software communicated with the instruments using GPIB commands and almost all the functions of the instrument are available from the PC.
Benchlink also allows the data transfer in a spreadsheet format. The acquired data can be plotted and charted as wanted.
Using Benchlink Software
-Using Benchlink with HP 34401 DMM
-Using Benchlink with HP 54600B Scope
-Using Benchlink with HP 33120A Function generator
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