[time-nuts] Arduino GPIB

paul swed paulswedb at gmail.com
Mon Jan 12 14:45:12 UTC 2015


That certainly is a hack. But its something I have often thought about and
never did. He is right its really a one instrument interface as it doesn't
have the buffers to drive the load of multiple instruments.
But heavens that has to be a really cheap interface for a bit of soldering
effort. My type of effort. :-)
Regards
Paul.
WB8TSL

On Sun, Jan 11, 2015 at 11:57 PM, Joseph Gray <jgray at zianet.com> wrote:

> I thought everyone here would find this of interest. I stumbled across it a
> few days ago on the 'net. It is a Prologix GPIB-USB compatible made with an
> Arduino Uno.
>
>
> http://egirland.blogspot.com/2014/03/arduino-uno-as-usb-to-gpib-controller.html
>
> Like on his web site, I just took a cheap GPIB cable, cut off about 12
> inches and shoved the wires into the socket holes on an Uno. I uploaded his
> program and did some minor testing so far. BTW, it didn't work the first
> time due to poor contact. I shoved some pin headers in, after the wires and
> now it works fine.
>
> John's Prologix config program works just fine with this cobbled together
> GPIB adapter. I attached it to my HP 3457A and then ran the demo program
> that comes with Ulrich's EZGPIB. It is logging data as I type this. I will
> do more testing with other instruments, as I have time.
>
> As mentioned on the web page linked above, a few commands are not yet
> implemented, although they appear to be little used commands (except
> perhaps the ++savecfg command). I think I have a way to implement the ++rst
> command using the watchdog timer. For ++savecfg, it shouldn't be too
> difficult to store things in the Arduino EEPROM.
>
> I have some cheap Arduino Nano's and PCB-mount GPIB connectors on order. I
> will be making a couple of these Proligix-compatible adapters with those
> parts, so that they aren't just wires shoved into a board. I'll have to
> find a small box to house things. I have also ordered some buffer chips to
> add to the design. Total cost should be under $20 for each adapter.
>
> The firmware uses a serial baud rate of 115200, which I assume is the same
> as a real Prologix. I'm going to try some higher baud rates to see how fast
> the Arduino can push bits without losing them. I understand that with the
> default 16 MHz clock, non-standard baud rates that are evenly divisible
> into the clock rate should work even better I'll report back.
>
> One question about the baud rate - are there any reasons not to change from
> 115200? Since we are simply moving bits through a USB/Serial adapter, does
> any software really care what the baud rate is, as long as we don't drop
> any bits?
>
> Joe Gray
> W5JG
> _______________________________________________
> time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts at febo.com
> To unsubscribe, go to
> https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
> and follow the instructions there.
>



More information about the Time-nuts_lists.febo.com mailing list