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Raspberry Pi
Raspberry Pi Forum Pico SCPI Lab Switch project: automate your test setup with a standards compliant multi-channel switch
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Pico SCPI Lab Switch project: automate your test setup with a standards compliant multi-channel switch

Jan Cumps
Jan Cumps over 2 years ago

SCPI programmable LAB switch with USBTMC interface

Automated test setups often need switches:

  • to turn signals on and off
  • to enable or disable supplies
  • to add or remove output loads
  • to connect a measurement instrument to several circuit nodes and collect data
  • that integrate seamlessly with LabVIEW and pyvisa test setups
  • ...

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LabVIEW compatible. This video shows the WIP VI Virtual Instrument driver

In this blog series, I develop a lab switch that can do that. Programmable via SCPI. Plug-and-play compatible with the VISA test & measurement device standards. It supports the USBTMC standard and is IEEE 488.2 compliant. It can control any 3.3V compatible relay/switch circuit.


image

The core is a Raspberry Pico. Firmware is 97% based on SCPI and USBTMC cross-platform libraries. 3% (less than 30 lines of source code) is Pico specific.

image

The number of switches you can control is only limited by the amount of available GPIOs on the PICO.

image
image: WIP VI Virtual Instrument driver example

Command supported:

  • all standard SCPI commands (*IDN?, *RST, SYST:ERR...)
  • control a switch: DIGI:OUTP# 0|1
  • poll a switch state: DIGI:OUTP#?

The firmware is SCPI and IEEE488.2 compliant.
Free to use - also for commercial applications (except the LabVIEW driver). No restrictions and no promises. Please respect the licenses of the 3rd party libraries that are used in the project.
Check the last post for source code, PyVISA and LabVIEW test beds, and the Pico ready-to-load firmware binary.

link to all posts

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  • ggabe
    ggabe over 2 years ago

    Great project, Jan. I built one with a 16 relay board. It's super convenient that the TMC device can be referred from pyvisa by name regardless what USB port it's plugged in. In contrast with ASRL devices, where names will change with the USB location. I built two other SCPI devicest, a DAC and a function generator, I'm considering to port their firmware to TMC for this reason.    

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  • ggabe
    ggabe over 2 years ago

    Great project, Jan. I built one with a 16 relay board. It's super convenient that the TMC device can be referred from pyvisa by name regardless what USB port it's plugged in. In contrast with ASRL devices, where names will change with the USB location. I built two other SCPI devicest, a DAC and a function generator, I'm considering to port their firmware to TMC for this reason.    

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