S**.
A very economical alternative to the National Instruments version
I needed to remotely communicate with my Keithley 2001 DMM in the lab so needed a GPIB interface. I was looking for a portable USB-GPIB version and came across this. The National Instruments version is $700, so I would MUCH rather spend this type of money...assuming it worked. The header says it's an Agilent device, but the picture says it's manufactured by Keysight. At first I thought Keysight was a Chinese knockoff, but it turns out to be a bona fide US offshoot of HP-Agilent and was manufactured in Malaysia.The adapter comes with a driver installation CD which I would recommend using instead of searching for drivers off the web. Using the supplied drivers will ensure optimal compatibility. The drivers installed without issue on the two Win7 boxes at work. After plugging the adapter into the computer, it goes through the regular driver search routine and after a couple of minutes finishes the first round and then installs the second level without issues.A "Keysight IO Libraries Suite" applet is installed in your toolbar and after selecting the "Connection Expert", it goes out and searches all of the I/O avenues connected to the computer, GPIB, serial, parallel, lan, etc. and lists all the devices found. You can then click on a found instrument, in my case the Keithley 2001, and then click on the "Interactive IO" button to bring up a simple window to send/receive commands/queries. It works pretty well to quickly verify comms functionality. There's another button labeled "Command Expert" that allows more functionality and script-like behavior. This is not initially installed, but it will lead you to Keysight's website to download it. Haven't messed with it much but if you have a lot of instruments, it might be useful.My biggest worry was being able to use this interface in LabView. As installed, LabView does not recognize the adapter. Also, during the initial driver installation, it will recognize if you have other GPIB drivers/dlls installed and will ask you if you want to overwrite the existing drivers, or use both "side by side". Definitely select "side by side"! LabView still won't recognize the adapter. You then need to Google "Agilent usb-GPIB 82357B is not shown in NI MAX" to find the procedure to get things set up. Amazon won't let me publish the URL, so you need to Google it. At that point you're good to go. I made a rudimentary vi to query a thermistor resistance and no issues.So far, my only quibble is the fact that the adapter will only work with 32-bit LabView. Not a big deal going forward, but everything I've written so far has been in the 64-bit version. I'm not planning on adding this functionality to older vi's, but I just need to remember to use the 32-bit version when GPIB is needed. I'm glad I found this!
Trustpilot
1 day ago
3 days ago