Peter, Jon and I are building a Programmable Electronic Load. In this series of blogs I'm building a LabVIEW library of reusable components
In this fifth article: Enable and Disable the Input. |
LabVIEW has a set of blocks to build flows with serial communication devices. Those blocks work well with our instrument.
However, inspired by what many instruments do (in this case, the BK Precision 85xx series), I'm creating more abstract blocks.
Input Control Block
This blog is also easy. It enables and disables the load input.
For the Input Control block, the input parameters are
- VISA resource name eload
- Enable Input Terminals (True, 1, ON: On - False, 0, OFF: Off)
- error in (no error)
The output parameters are
- VISA resource name out
- error out
After running this block, the following functionality is performed:
- The load inputs are either disabled or enabled.
When disabled, the output FET is not driven and the inputs are at their highest resistance.
When enabled, the load is active and the current that it tries to draw is defined by what you have asked the instrument draw. - If an error is detected, the VISA resource is closed and error info is passed to the caller.
Else the block passes the measured value to the calling flow via the Measurement parameter.
Setting the Function
Depending on the value you pass (in this example True: On), it will set the instrument input to Off (false) or On (true).
