Products > Test Equipment
Free HP3478A multimeter control program.
lmester:
The user Miti has informed me that there is a problem with my instrument calibration update function. If you enter a gain value above 1.055555 my program will write an incorrect gain value into the instrument. Until I resolve this bug, you should only enter gain values below 1.055555. Also, you should verify the new gain value by exiting and then re-enter the cal update window. Verify that the current cal gain data read from the instrument matches the value that you saved.
I'm sorry about this problem.
Once I determine what's wrong I'll release an updated version.
coromonadalix:
@ lmester a warning popup should be fine to warn user of the possibility to smash the instrument calibration.
For the backups, i dont know if you can poke an serial number thru the gpib port via some commands ??
and create a file snxxxxxx-date xxxxxx-time xxxxxx and manage all this ??
I think the simplest solution would be per use basis, one software use / one instrument, if a person has 2x, 3x 3478 meters in a chain and does a mistake ....... sure the cal switch is a good protection.
I dont know if the meter can operate under "calibration" at on position ?? sadly i dont own these meters
You know when we say dont do this and that loll someone will do it loll
And thks for the time put in this great piece of software
lmester:
--- Quote from: coromonadalix on December 27, 2019, 09:40:54 am ---@ lmester a warning popup should be fine to warn user of the possibility to smash the instrument calibration.
For the backups, i dont know if you can poke an serial number thru the gpib port via some commands ??
and create a file snxxxxxx-date xxxxxx-time xxxxxx and manage all this ??
I think the simplest solution would be per use basis, one software use / one instrument, if a person has 2x, 3x 3478 meters in a chain and does a mistake ....... sure the cal switch is a good protection.
I dont know if the meter can operate under "calibration" at on position ?? sadly i dont own these meters
You know when we say dont do this and that loll someone will do it loll
And thks for the time put in this great piece of software
--- End quote ---
First, the instrument will operate when in "calibration" mode. It just shows a "C" appended to the reading. Also, the instrument has no way to read it's serial number through GPIB. It'd be great to be able to automatically add a serial number to the cal data file. It's just not possible with this instrument. The best solution is probably just to dump a time/date stamped file to the user's hard drive before each cal edit.
Right now I'm working on the more important problem of why my program is limited in the range of cal gain values that can be properly sent to the instrument. This may just be a problem with my program range checks. I may be allowing the user to input invalid cal data. More work and talk with the original author of the calibration decode algorithm is needed.
How much protection do you need to have for operator errors? I remember a quote from many decades ago:
"You can try to goof-proof a system. Unfortunately the goof can allways be bigger than the proof!"
coromonadalix:
Well said lmester
I hope you find the little buggar in the software
lmester:
I've released an updated version of the software.
This version should work without problems with the current version of the AR488 Arduino firmware. If you use an Arduino based GPIB adapter and have any problems please let me know!
Updates to the edit calibration feature:
It seems that I was allowing invalid data to be entered for the gain entry.
The range check for gain now allows a value from 1 to 1.055555.
The allowed offset range is -100000 to 899999.
I added an automatic backup of the calibration data.
When you write calibration data, a file with the previous data will be saved in the cfg (config) folder.
The date and time are appended to the filename. Here is an example filename.
CALBackup_2020_01_01_02_53_14.cal
The file uses the normal .cal file format and can be sent to the instrument using the "Write calibration" function.
Fixed bug with reading instrument settings on program start:
When you start the program you have two options for instrument settings:
You can use the current settings or write the settings saved in the program config file to the instrument.
The program was not properly reading the current settings.
This has now been corrected.
Minor GUI layout problems with Windows 10:
I recently upgraded from Windows 7 to Windows 10. With Win 10 I noticed that some of the radio button controls were overlapping and not displayed properly. This version corrects the problem.
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