3458a logging via Excel macro

[Assafl]

Has anyone used Open Office's spreadsheet?
I don't have excel - and it's a chore to get Benchview
on this old computer, only to find that it won't work.

Tried it on the RPi 3 - and the log csv had a 100k lines or so with 6 columns per line. The thing just hung there, took minutes to filter it, and never got to a graph.... Mathematica also took time but was faster.

Eventually just got it to the desktop and response was immediate.

Mind you: The RPi 3 is not the best device for a spreadsheet so it not fair to compare Excel on a 16G i5 machine with an NVMe SSD, with Open Office on a RPI 3 (even with a good class SD card..).

[enut11]

@IanJ
Hi I got excited when I saw your post as I have wanted to get some data logging on my HP3456A for some time. I have an Agilent 82357B.

However, Win 10 refuses to recognise the 82357B at all. My other PC, a laptop with Win XP recognises the 82357B but crashes on running the spreadsheet (Excel 2007). I tried both the original and final versions of your spreadsheet. Help.
enut11

[branadic]

Have you installed the driver for 82357B? The driver is available in Keysight IO Libraries Suite:

http://www.keysight.com/en/pd-1985909/io-libraries-suite?nid=-33330.977662.00&cc=DE&lc=ger&cmpid=zzfindiosuite

[IanJ]

@IanJ
Hi I got excited when I saw your post as I have wanted to get some data logging on my HP3456A for some time. I have an Agilent 82357B.

However, Win 10 refuses to recognise the 82357B at all. My other PC, a laptop with Win XP recognises the 82357B but crashes on running the spreadsheet (Excel 2007). I tried both the original and final versions of your spreadsheet. Help.
enut11

Yes, it doesn't look like you have the drivers loaded/available to the 82357B. It's a 900mb download of which the drivers are just a few mb.
Before you open the spreadsheet wait until the 82357B has just one green LED lit.
Worth also checking the address of your 3458a matches the spreadsheet.

If I can get my 3458a back up and running tonight then I'll have a new version of the spreadsheet to upload.

Ian.

[IanJ]

Hi all,

New version attached.

- Added more info to the header like temperature, No. of cals, error code status, current value read etc.
- Have turned on the GPIB buffer, apparently this has to be on to be able to get full access to the status register.
- Capturing more input value ranges.

Things NOT implemented yet:-
- If you set a large NPLC but a small sample time you'll likely crash the spreadsheet. There is some error checking to try and capture this via the status register but not sure if it's working yet......not really sure how it works....I need to get my head around it.

Ian.

[branadic]

I don't use Excel either but have LibreOffice installed. Seems the macro is not compatible with it.

[enut11]

Have you installed the driver for 82357B? The driver is available in Keysight IO Libraries Suite:

http://www.keysight.com/en/pd-1985909/io-libraries-suite?nid=-33330.977662.00&cc=DE&lc=ger&cmpid=zzfindiosuite

Thanks branadic. Done that. Now Excel has trouble connecting to the HP3456A and refuses to run.
enut11

[enut11]

@IanJ
Hi I got excited when I saw your post as I have wanted to get some data logging on my HP3456A for some time. I have an Agilent 82357B.

However, Win 10 refuses to recognise the 82357B at all. My other PC, a laptop with Win XP recognises the 82357B but crashes on running the spreadsheet (Excel 2007). I tried both the original and final versions of your spreadsheet. Help.
enut11

Yes, it doesn't look like you have the drivers loaded/available to the 82357B. It's a 900mb download of which the drivers are just a few mb.
Before you open the spreadsheet wait until the 82357B has just one green LED lit.
Worth also checking the address of your 3458a matches the spreadsheet.

If I can get my 3458a back up and running tonight then I'll have a new version of the spreadsheet to upload.

Ian.

Thanks Ian. Drivers loaded. Green light on. My HP3456A address is 23 so changed to that. When I run macro, error cannot connect to instrument. Does it matter that I am not using an HP3458A?
enut11

[Bud]

Try my crude adaptation spreadsheet for 3456A.
(Parameters sheet is not used).

Worked with my Agilent clone adapter.

[HighVoltage]

OK, I just tried your version 10 for the first time

The Keysight I/O library was installed, so the USB adapter was found without problems
As soon as I opened up your Excel file and enabled editing and hit start, all worked well and the collection of data started.
No changes made to the settings

A few observations so far:
- Once in a while I get "Syntax Error" listed in the Last Error Message but then it continues with the next reading
- Every time I hit the start button, the first reading is copied to the Error Registry (decimal): spot and just stays there.
- If I set the NPLC: to 100 the software hangs and does nothing and does not recover and requires a restart of the Excel Macro
- In your Value column I see a value with lots of additional zeros and a wrong decimal place
- Current Value is not showing any value, just ####



Improvements request
- Can you add to log the internal temperature with each reading
- Can you leave a field to add a string during initialization, may be just below the NPLC entry?

In general it seems to be a great way of storing the data from the 3458A

[TiN]

Can you add to log the internal temperature with each reading

Have a mercy for input relays K6,K7,K1, their life time is not inifinite...
Better to have every 50th or 100th or other bigger n-th reading. I mean you don't really need to know temperature every 10 seconds anyway.

[IanJ]

Hi all,

New version attached.

- Fixed a problem with STOP, it now actually stops everything including the internal timer which was left running in previous versions.
- Added in some error handling.
- Added a 'resume' button......the idea that after you hit stop you can resume from where it left off at any time. I'm guessing if you want to stop, then manually CAL and then carry on again.

Ian.

[quarks]

Hello Ian,

thanks a lot for sharing.
It works well with my 3458A.

bye
quarks

[IanJ]

OK, I just tried your version 10 for the first time

The Keysight I/O library was installed, so the USB adapter was found without problems
As soon as I opened up your Excel file and enabled editing and hit start, all worked well and the collection of data started.
No changes made to the settings

A few observations so far:
- Once in a while I get "Syntax Error" listed in the Last Error Message but then it continues with the next reading
- Every time I hit the start button, the first reading is copied to the Error Registry (decimal): spot and just stays there.
- If I set the NPLC: to 100 the software hangs and does nothing and does not recover and requires a restart of the Excel Macro
- In your Value column I see a value with lots of additional zeros and a wrong decimal place
- Current Value is not showing any value, just ####

Improvements request
- Can you add to log the internal temperature with each reading
- Can you leave a field to add a string during initialization, may be just below the NPLC entry?

In general it seems to be a great way of storing the data from the 3458A

I get the same syntax problem with last message......I'm just passing on what the library gives me so need to look deeper.

The next version will update the error register every time. At the moment it only reads it at the start.

large NPLC like 100 is a problem I have yet to get to. There's an issue with trying to talk to the 3458a whilst it's 'busy' and I've yet to bottom this out. For now, if you set a high NPLC then just make sure your sample time set is greater than the NPLC time.....albeit I haven't tried that.

Assuming you set 10vdc the 3458 responded with E+01 which means a x10 multipier needs set on the string...thus you should see 10.0nnnnn.....not sure why it's not processing properly for you. Will do some more testing.
Would be nice to know what you get for 0.1v, 1v ranges etc.....

The #### on current value is just because the string is too long for the cell.......because of above problem.

Not sure what you mean by add a string during initialization?

Ian.

[IanJ]

Hi all,

New version attached.

- Bugfix.......as noticed by HighVoltage some parameters on the status panel appearing where they shouldn't be.
- Error register now updating at each sample reading.

My 3458a and 82357B are just horrific together.......sometimes GPIB stops listening for an hour or so then back on again. Sloooooo development!!!

Ian.

[IanJ]

Hi all,

New version attached.

- Tidy up code.
- Added the text "PAUSED" on the row after a STOP/RESUME so there's a record of when the logging had technically been interrupted.

Ian.

[Tony_G]

This is outstanding.

Made a couple of changes to v12 on the Graph page - Put MAX(Datalog!D:D) and MIN(Datalog!D:D) in for the Y values so now the graph autoscales to the data in the list and set the max X to be Datalog!E8.

This gives me an auto-scaling graph - Perf probably sucks but I'm going to let it capture a bunch of data and check it out.

TonyG

[Theboel]

Hi All,
Are this macro only applied for 3458A ? 

[IanJ]

Hi all,

New version attached.

Tony_G's idea of auto-scaling the y-axis I think is a great one......so i've implemented an additional button on the graph page to facilitate this.

One caveat, some versions of Excel (2007 I think) only allow 65536 rows maximum to scan, but of course the limit on others is 1048576. So, you may get an error when you hit the auto-scaling button.

Theboel - My work is centred around the 3458a......but it may work with tweaks for other similarly old meters by HP/Agilent/Keysight.

Ian.

[IanJ]

Hi all,

New version attached.

- Slight mod to the auto-scale function, cells C3 & C4 on the graph page now update to reflect the auto-scaling Y-axis values if applied.

The attached also has 26hrs of data after I hooked up a voltage reference (not mine) set to 5v. As can be seen I paused the logging 7 times to ACAL DCV.
I only stopped it because my logging failed......dang faulty GPIB..!

Ian.

[enut11]

Try my crude adaptation spreadsheet for 3456A.
(Parameters sheet is not used).

Worked with my Agilent clone adapter.

Hi Bud. Thanks for the sheet. I connected my 82357B to Win XP laptop running XL2007. Got the green light on the adapter. This is what I got. Any idea on how I can fix the spreadsheet?
enut11

[Bud]

Do you have Keysight IO Libraries Suite installed? The Excel macro relays on it as the underlaying GPIB communication engine.

[enut11]

Hi Bud. Yes, installed the Keysight I/O libraries on the old Win XP PC. I suspect it is a limitation with XL 2007.

I have had success with my Win 10 desktop PC. It now recognises the 82357B and turns on the green light. All I did was change USB port. Strange.

Your 3456A.zip file worked and I am now happily logging data from my home made LM399 10v reference.  . Thank you a lot for this modified version.

Would you mind sharing how you did it in case I want to adapt it for another meter?
enut11

[Bud]

Sorry I did inline edits in the code and did not keep track of them. To see the code click Developer tab , then Visual Basic as shown in the attached picture. It will open the project view and in the left pane click Sheet1, all code is there.

[enut11]

Hi Bud
When I put a short across the HP3456A input, I get the following output into XL

Value
-7.00000002407108E-10

String from 3456A
-000.0007E-3

ie, there seems to be a difference of x1000 between the 'string' and the 'value' which is recorded.
enut11