Igor controlling hardware Keithley 2450

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Tue, 01/27/2015 - 09:59 am

I am a new user of Igor and I am trying to combine data acquisition and data analysis via Igor's extensions (XOPs). Specifically speaking, I want to measure j/V curves of solar cells with Keithley 2450.
I activated VISA.xop by dragging its shortcut to the Igor Pro/Igor Extension folder. But I do not know how to invoke/call this feature.
Thank you all！
Best.
When you drag the shortcut into the Igor extensions folder Igor will automatically load the .xop every time you start Igor up. In the Visa folder, there should be an VISA XOP Tests.pxp which should give you some idea how to structure the commands. Also, if you go to help->command help and type/look for VISA in the left column list of commands, it gives you the structure of each visa command.

How do you plan to connect to the Keithley? Serial, USB, LAN, GPIB? Keithley makes it pretty easy to remotely program there machines. The newer Keithley SMUs can use the TSP software to make scripts (functions on the machine that can be run to perform a measure and spit out results) and locally save them on the SMUs. I've written controls for a Keithley by using an example script (probably have a similar one to J/V in there examples) and slightly editing it for remote triggering. This way, you make a function in Igor which calls the Keithley function (e.g. SolarCellJVSweep(start,stop,step,etc.)) and then a Igor read from bus command when the test is complete. The write and read commands are different depending on how you connect to the instrument. You can also have Igor load the Keithley script through a your interface as a function that sends the script information as strings. This way, you can make Igor the location for editing how the Keithley script behaves. I would recommend getting it to work how you want it through the TSP software and then transferring over to Igor when you understand how the Keithley script works.

I've personally never used the VISA setup to control an instrument so I'm not sure what the advantage is. Not sure if it makes this any easier.

Hope this helps, though it probably just gives you more questions.

January 27, 2015 at 02:40 pm - Permalink

bpatterson wrote:
When you drag the shortcut into the Igor extensions folder Igor will automatically load the .xop every time you start Igor up. In the Visa folder, there should be an VISA XOP Tests.pxp which should give you some idea how to structure the commands. Also, if you go to help->command help and type/look for VISA in the left column list of commands, it gives you the structure of each visa command.

How do you plan to connect to the Keithley? Serial, USB, LAN, GPIB? Keithley makes it pretty easy to remotely program there machines. The newer Keithley SMUs can use the TSP software to make scripts (functions on the machine that can be run to perform a measure and spit out results) and locally save them on the SMUs. I've written controls for a Keithley by using an example script (probably have a similar one to J/V in there examples) and slightly editing it for remote triggering. This way, you make a function in Igor which calls the Keithley function (e.g. SolarCellJVSweep(start,stop,step,etc.)) and then a Igor read from bus command when the test is complete. The write and read commands are different depending on how you connect to the instrument. You can also have Igor load the Keithley script through a your interface as a function that sends the script information as strings. This way, you can make Igor the location for editing how the Keithley script behaves. I would recommend getting it to work how you want it through the TSP software and then transferring over to Igor when you understand how the Keithley script works.

I've personally never used the VISA setup to control an instrument so I'm not sure what the advantage is. Not sure if it makes this any easier.

Hope this helps, though it probably just gives you more questions.

Thanks for your reply. At least I know how to get started.
BTW, I connect 2450 to computer via Ethernet.

January 28, 2015 at 11:51 am - Permalink