[time-nuts] An open-source software to automate test equipment - Instrument Control (iC)

Kurt Pernstich kurt.pernstich at gmail.com
Tue Jul 12 17:40:22 UTC 2011


May I please use this forum to advertise Instrument Control (iC), which is
an open source Java program to control test equipment via GPIB. It is, so to
speak, the poor man's version of LabView (but enough to do my research).

iC processes as list of script commands which define the action in clear
text, e.g. Tsample setHeaterRange 1 or HP4155 PlotData Id; Vd. Instrument
Control is, therefore, easily adapted to various measurement needs.

Instrument Control is hosted on http://kenai.com/projects/icontrol and you
can download a compiled version (e.g. to try iC right now) as well as the
source code (after you became a member of this project). The
javadoc/Documentation is also available online (http://icontrol.kenai.com),
and I am preparing a manuscript which describes Instrument Control (iC) in
more details. Please drop me a note if you like to read the manuscript.


There are two short video tutorials explaining what iC can do and how it is
used: http://kenai.com/projects/icontrol/downloads/directory/Tutorial_Videos

A great feature of iC is that it allows to define new commands in a text
file (see tutorial video 2 on generic GPIB commands), and that it is very
easy to extend the functionality of iC to support more test equipment (see
http://icontrol.kenai.com/doc-files/programmatic.html).

iC has been tested on WinXP and Mac, and should also run on Unix/Linux. It
works with GPIB cards from National Instruments, Agilent and Prologix. It
supports a subset of commands of those instruments: Lakeshore 340/332
Temperature Controller, Agilent 4155/4156 Semiconductor Parameter Analyzer,
HP 4192 Impedance Analyzer, Lakeshore 625 Superconducting Magnet Power
Supply and more to come.

If you give it a try then please let me know how you like it.

Hope you find Instrument Control useful!
Kurt Pernstich


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