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A low cost and ultra easy to use USB/GPIB interface, for remote control of any GPIB-enabled equipment or simply for screen dump with plotter emulation software |
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Fact sheet
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smart488 The simple and inexpensive USB/GPIB
interface
Simple
!
Reliable !
Compatible !
Powerful !
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Our distributors
You can buy the smart488 interface from the following distributors :
| UK, IRELAND |  |
| FRANCE |  |
| SWEDEN, NORWAY, FINLAND |  |
| SPAIN, PORTUGAL |  |
For other countries please contact any of the distributors above.
Documentation
| Installation and user manual, version 3B |
| CE certificate of conformity |
Download area
| Plug&play drivers for Windows XP and Vista |
| Labview example |
| TeratermPro terminal emulation software |
| KE5FX GPIB toolkit and plotter emulator |
Application notes
| come back soon... |
FAQ
| Why Smart488 is significantly cheaper than existing USB/GPIB interfaces ? | Smart488 is a product optimized for 99% of GPIB applications, where a PC needs to send commands and/or to read measurements or screen dumps from test instruments. It doesn't include barely used features like slave mode or serial poll, and this allows to reduce costs. Moreover its innovative single microcontroller architecture allows very good performances (up to 300kbps), but still significantly lower than 500$+ interfaces which main be a better choice for applications requiring top level performances. |
| I am a beginner with GPIB. Is Smart488 actually easy to use ? | Yes it is, just use transparent mode : Configure your GPIB instrument on GPIB address 1 (through dip switches or menus on the instrument), connect the smart488 with its factory configuration between your instrument and your PC, launch a terminal emulation program and you will talk with your instrument right away in the majority of cases. |
| Can I connect several GPIB instruments to a single smart488 ? | Smart488 offers a large set of configuration commands in its advanced modes, and in particular can be dynamically switched between several instruments on a GPIB bus. There is however an electrical limitation : As smart488 doesn't have high power drivers on the GPIB bus interface it can't drive the full 15 instruments that the GPIB specification tolerate on the same bus. Our tests shows that there is no problem for up to 3 instruments but it is equipment and cable length dependent. However as the smart488 interface is not more expensive than a simple GPIB to GPIB cable why not using simply one smart488 interface per equipment connected to USB hub ? This way the performances are maximal and the PC-side software is far easier to write as each equipment is mapped on a different virtual com port... |
| Will it be compatible with my GPIB instrument ? | Smart488 have up to now worked with any GPIB-compatible equipment we have tested it with, and in particular with Lecroy 9350 oscilloscope, HP3585A, HP8569A, HP8563E spectrum analyzers (with Benchlink or GPIB toolkit softwares), HP5334 counter, HP5372A time analyzer, Wavetek 75 generator, Enertec 7150 multimeter, Wain Kerr RLC bridge, etc. Moreover smart488 provides a full set of advanced configuration options that should allows to virtually solve potential compatibility issues. If your equipment doesn't seems to be compatible just contact us and we will do our best to solve the situation, if needed with a new firmware update (as smart488 firmware can be field updated through USB) |
| Can I use it with Labview ? With Visual C++ ? With Python ? | With Smart488 your GPIB equipment (or chain of equipments) appears as a virtual com port on your PC. So you can use any development environment which allows to access to a serial port, which means all of them. See download section and user manual for examples. |
| Will it be compatible with my current GPIB applications ? | It depends on the GPIB interface you were using. If you used a kind of serial to GPIB transparent interface and if you use the smart488 in transparent mode then the answer is very probably yes. However in other cases you will very probably to change some low level parts of your application. The most common required change is the addition of line end characters (see the two answers below), but you may also need to add custom commands to the smart488 if you don't use transparent mode. |
| I send commands to my equipment but it doesn't seem to execute them. Why ? | Very probably because you are not sending the proper end of command character. A GPIB equipment often waits for a signal on the EOI GPIB line to execute the command. However as smart488 is mapped as a virtual COM port we need a way to signal an end of GPIB message. So the smart488 check a specific data byte (CR by default) and then trigger the EOI line. Check with smart488 default configuration and with a terminal emulator like TeraTermPro. See user manual. |
| I can send commands to my equipment but it never answer. Why ? | Very probably because there is a problem on the line ending usage. The smart488 switch back the equipment to talk mode after reception of the end of message character (CR by default). However if the PC sends any extra character after this flag (for example a LF...) then the equipement will consider it as a new start of message and may not answer to the first command. Check with smart488 default configuration and with a terminal emulator like TeraTermPro. See user manual. |
| I just need a USB/GPIB interface to get pretty screen copies from my test equipment, which only support HP7470 plotters or similar. Can I use smart488 ? | Yes, smart488 is compatible with the very good open source plotter emulation software developped by KE5FX in device initiated mode (meaning that the PC will be waiting for a plot, simply initiated by a press of the "screendump" button on the instrument). See download section. |
Copyright April 2008 [ALCIOM]. All rights reserved