GPIB Communicator

This little program lets you connect to up to 14 devices on a GPIB bus and manually talk to one at the time. 

When started it scans the bus for devices and configures itself. By default there's a list of common commands which could be added to, deleted from, saved and recalled in different ways. You can save a reply from a device directly to a file and also send a file back to a device - handy if you want to save for example an instrument setup and later set up the instrument (or another) the same way. There's a syntax error check utility with two different ways of checking. I haven't tried it on other than Tektronix instruments, however I believe alternative 2 is standard and will work on later models of other brands too.

Decl 13, 2009 - New version 1.8 !

Changes from 1.71 1to 1.8:  

Bugfixes:

  Double question marks only (??) now doesn't send anything before expecting an input (used to send a zero string),

  Runtime error if CAPS or Find Matching Commands was checked before any device is selected fixed,

  Clearing Outgoing Message didn't disable Send.

New:

  Added checkboxes to select ID query command (ID? and/or *IDN?). If both are checked (default) IDquery will first be ID? and if that fails next *IDN?,

  Changed timeout to 300 ms for ID,

  A No response message was added if ID fail,

  Added checkboxes to add CR and/or LF at the end of outgoing message. Default is none checked,

  Clear button renamed "Restore" and buttons Restore, Send and Clear slightly increased in width,

  More Keyboard "ALT + key" shortcuts added,

  Deleting Outgoing Message Entry can now only be done with the X button and not Esc key,

  When an Outgoing Message is deleted the next or previous item will be selected rather than a blank line,

  Some minor changes in appearance.

Known Isssue:

  The program does not support GPIB address 0. It will find a device with address 0 on the bus but it will not configure itself correctly and not be able to connect correctly to any device on the bus.

  Workaround:  Don't use address 0 on any device on the bus.

Changes from 1.7 1to 1.71:

  Changed the dialogboxes when sending datafile to device so sending must be confirmed before the transfer,

  Changed so the checkbox for finding matching text in the Outgoing Message list while typing is unchecked by default,

Changes from 1.6 1to 1.7:

  Added a checkbox to enable/disable upper case text only in the Outgoing Message box,

  Added a checkbox to enable/disable finding matching text in the Outgoing Message list while typing,

  Added a function, in the File menu,  to send a datafile to a selected device,

  Some text has been changed,

  A few internal changes.

Changes from 1.6 to 1.61:

  A limit of 7 devices that was used for testing of v1.6 was mistakenly left and now corrected,

  A minor bug concerning how the Send button was enabled fixed,

  A couple annoying misspellings fixed.

Changes from 1.5 to 1.6:

   Decreased number of possible devices to 14 to comply with standard,

   Button added so ID from all connected devices could be captured in just one click,

   A couple of Menu items added,

   Increased size of Outgoing Message box so longer commands could be viewed,

   A couple of possible Run Time Errors fixed,

   Save message file on exit always done to the default file fixed so it is now saved to the current file,

   Several internal procedures changed,

Here's a screen shot.

Even though it doesn't do very much it's very useful if you want to try out commands and/or figure out the syntax which sometimes could be complex or for some other reason communicate manually with GPIB devices and with the file utilities you could easily send data like setups and waveforms between the PC and a device.

You must have a NI GPIB card with the correct drivers installed.  Find  and download National Instruments GPIB card drivers here.

Personally I run it mostly on old win 98 PC's using PC II/IIA (ISA) cards. I have also successfully tried it with NI cards like AT GPIB (win 98) and GPIB-PCI on Win 2k and XP. I assume any correctly installed and working NI card should work. 

Be sure to uninstall any previuos version befor installing this one.

Download GPIB Communicator here. 

Email me with comments. /Håkan