GPIB programs for 40m lab use
These program set up, run, and download the results of measurements performed on a SR785 signal analyzer, AG4395A network analyzer, or HP8591E spectrum analyzer, presuming some kind of ethernet to GPIB communication capability (such as is provided by our yellow prologix boxes).
Ran without any arguments, the programs displays help text, detailing the available commands. These include options to:
- Download the data currently on the instrument display, with the option of plotting the data with matplotlib.
- Remotely trigger a previously configured measurement.
- Run a user-defined measurement through the use of a template file, with the option to plot the results of the current and previous measurements with matplotlib.
- Remotely reset the instrument.
Example template files for PSD and frequency response measurements are included, which have some explanation of what the different arguments expect and define. In addition, the program has the option to copy the template files to the user's current working directory to be modified as desired for a specific measurement.
Python package dependencies:
- numpy
- matplotlib
- yaml
In ubuntu, these can be installed via sudo apt-get install python-numpy python-matplotlib python-yaml
(Older scripts are included in the "oldScripts" directory. )
Thoughts on changes:
- Need to make python3 ready, mostly being tripped up by print comands right now;
- More flexablity in use of template files, right now frequency range can only be defined in the template files, it would be nice if all the options in the .yml file could be manually specified so that scripting of batch collects of data can be done more easy;
- Build in support for multispanning of measurments for smooth stitching of logarithmic spans. Feed in full freq range, num of spans and and desired resolution bandwidth
- Some settings like video bandwidth, etc are not included in AG4395A config files
- Also general dir for cloning onto my local machines so I have the same code and config.yml s on all.