Power Supply Instrument Control

Technical
1

I am wondering if I can use the power supply channel as a instrument class but not a whole instrument.

There are some power supplies in my system, which are Rigol 1116A (two channels) for high current, N6700C with 4 modules for normal use. Depends on my DUT, some is OK with N6700, some need to use N6700 and Rigol 1116A. My current idea is in the test step code, I set the power channel as an instrument. When setting up the instrument in editor, I need to assign the address and channel number. For example, I have 4 power supply instrument instance, all of them use the same visa address (N6700’s address) but assign different channel number and 2 Rigol 1116A instrument instance. So that I don’t need to write different test code, just only to assign the proper power supply instance. I know as the test plan start, the instrument will be opened at first, would this 4 instance with same address fail when the first visa address have been opened?

Is it possible? I don’t have the N6700 on hand now. Looking forward to your feedback, if you have other idea, we can discuss.

1 Like
2

I think it sounds like a good design. Maybe you should make a kind of N6700 ‘base’/‘chassis’ instrument and have each N6700 ‘channel’ instrument reference that. This way you can use the N6700 ‘base’ as a SCPI instrument.

This way, the channel instrument is kind of a slice of the N7600 instrument.

OpenTap understands dependencies between instruments and makes sure they are opened in the right order.

public class N6700Chassis: ScpiInstrument{
 //...
}

public class N6700Channel : Instrument, IPowerSupply{
      // N6700Channel 'depends' on N6700 Chassis.
      // it is guaranteed that Chassis will be opened before Channel, 
      // and closed after channel
      public N6700Chassis Chassis{get;set;}
      public int ChannelNumber{get;set;}
}
1 Like
3

Hi Rolf,

Do you have the N6700 on hand?
I am wondering if I have two N6700Channel instance (share a same N6700Chassis), the OpenTAP would report error. Since the N6700Chassis is already opened.

4

Hi,

Update. This way works, I’ve tested on N6705 and E3648A. In Instrument panel, add the IPowerChannel instance and the power supply instance (like N6705 or E3648A or other model), in test code, use the pwoer channel instance not the power supply.

3 Likes
5

Good to hear you figured it out! This is one of the more advanced uses of resources, so it is not so straight forward, but I think from a user point of view it makes a lot of sense.