I'm road testing the Keithley Bench Digital Multimeter DMM6500. I proposed in my application to focus my review on instrument automation. In this post I review Keithley Communicator, an application to directly send TSP and SCPI commands to the meter.
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Keithley Communicator
This utility is great in its simplicity. It's a little app where you can type commands and push them to the DMM6500.
The app has an output window to print any info returned by the meter.
This is ideal to try out the effects of a remote command without having to do any preparation.
There's a setting where you can choose between SCPI or other language.
The only difference when you select SCPI is that the Communicator sends the *OPC and :SYST:ERR? commands after you send your command.
This is ideal when you are reading the reference guide and want to try out a command, or when you want to test if you have things right when developing.
Trying it Out
The program is available via the Start -> Keithley Instruments menu.
Select the instrument and set the language to Other.
Take care that your DMM6500 is set to TSP, not SCPI.
Look up the beeper.beep() TSP command in the reference.
Try it out. Enter beeper.beep(2, 2400).
Then press the Run button and listen.
The utility allows you to run multiple commands.
This is a little gem that 'll proof to be valuable when trying out automation.