This road-test is a continuation from Keithley Bench Digital Multimeter - Review
In this blog I played around and investigated the KickStart Instrument PC Control Software for data collection and plotting graphs with DMM 6500.
Evaluate the KickStart software usability for beginners
KickStart software is a freely available PC tool from Tektronix for data visualizations. This tool supports multiple instruments simultaneously but currently I am only using one DMM 6500 for tests. The software also supports power supplies, source measure unit (SMU) instruments, and dataloggers. The tool supports instruments connected using GPIB, LAN, and USB interfaces. The tool does require a license which can be acquired by registering the device on the Tektronix website and generating a free license. The software is easy to install and get started with.
Fig: The App window in Kickstart
Automate measurements from DMM6500 using KickStart
Below I did some measurements with the KickStart software for low resistance measurements (0.01ohm 50W resistor)
Fig: Plotting graphs with collected 2000 samples of data
Fig: A simple video showing the usability of the KickStart software
Using Test Script Builder (TSB)
The TSB from https://www.tek.com/keithley-test-script-builder can be used to debug scripts to send commands to the DMM remotely. Unforutenatly due to lack of time I did not devote much time to scripting here. But this is one of the things I want to do in the future
Conclusion
I found the KickStart software very easy to use and one can directly start working with it. The GUI of the tool is very simple and intuitive.