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Free HP3478A multimeter control program.

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lmester:
A new version is available with the ability to adjust an instrument calibration entry.

You can now adjust the gain and offset values for a calibration entry. You can use this to adjust the calibration without going through the full calibration procedure for the instrument.

This is from a request from Miti.

This code was made much easier thanks to code from Steve Matos (Steve1515).  He provided code that converted the compressed instrument cal data into a gain and offset value. I only had to reverse his algorithm to compress the gain and offset back into the cal data storage format.

When you click the "Update cal." button the new cal data will be written to the instrument.

Make sure that the cal enable switch is turned on or the cal write will fail.

Warning! Be careful with this. It gives you a quick and easy way to trash the instrument calibration.



coromonadalix:
Maybe  just maybe,  force the user to do a backup  before using this cal data interface ???

Surely  someone will do this mistake and learn from it ??

Ground_Loop:
Will your application also work with  3457?  I have mine at the cal lab right now and would like to back it up right out of the shop.

lmester:

--- Quote from: coromonadalix on December 25, 2019, 03:04:34 pm ---Maybe  just maybe,  force the user to do a backup  before using this cal data interface ???

Surely  someone will do this mistake and learn from it ??

--- End quote ---

coromonadalix,

I'd thought of doing some type of auto cal backup. I'd need a way to do it that would work without being a nuisance for someone that's adjusting their instrument's cal. you could enter the edit cal window many times while adjusting the cal data. A dialog to save a backup cal file each time would get old very quickly.

One possibility would be to automatically save a copy of the current instrument cal into the program cfg folder whenever edit cal was selected. This would be easy to code since the edit cal window already reads the current calibration data when it's opened. To make this automatic, I'd need to add a date/time stamp to the cal file name. A minor problem with this is that the cfg folder could have a lot of cal update log files in it. Not a big problem since the files are small. Also, if the user has multiple instruments, they'd need to determine which instrument the cal update logs came from.

There is some protection already available with my program and with the instrument.

First, you need to turn on the front panel cal enable switch.

Next, you get a final warning from my program before new cal data is written.

Any suggestions on how to make the edit cal feature safer but still easy to use would be welcome.


lmester:

--- Quote from: Ground_Loop on December 26, 2019, 01:43:21 am ---Will your application also work with  3457?  I have mine at the cal lab right now and would like to back it up right out of the shop.

--- End quote ---

I did a quick look through the 3457 docs.  It's unlikely that my program would work. Calibration requires that the user enters a PIN code to enable calibration. This may not even be possible through the GPIB interface. Much different than the hardware cal enable switch on the HP3478A.

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