GPIB - using the ICS 4896

You can get one of this devices out of the usual "junk" site for around 60 Eur, pretty useless if you think you can use it a a serial to GPIB because it's only a "collector" of 4 serial interfaces and placing the data on a GPIB bus. You will be better suited for the same with a regular dual or quad serial card or even the usb to serial adapters unless you already have a GPIB interface card.

I got one unit thinking that eventual I could use it also as a converter/interface of serial to GPIB, no, I should have read the specs first! Anyhow might be useful eventually one day to get multiple serial data simultaneously on the GPIB bus.

Reference picture of the device:

This was also the device that took me more time to make it work with the National Instruments GPIP board from this post on Linux.

The main code/graphical interface in python is this one (getICS4896S1.py):

=========
 #!/usr/bin/python
import Tkinter as tk
import time
import Gpib
import subprocess
inst = Gpib.Gpib("ics")

counter = 0
line = []

def counter_label(label):
  def count():
    global counter
    counter += 1
    p = subprocess.Popen("/home/rmartins/soft/ics_serial/getonelineS1.py", stdout=subprocess.PIPE, shell=True)
    (output, err) = p.communicate()
    p_status = p.wait()
    label.config(text=output)
    label.after(100, count)
  count()


root = tk.Tk()
root.title("    ICS 4896 reading from S1    ")
label = tk.Label(root, fg="green")
label.pack()
counter_label(label)
button = tk.Button(root, text='Stop', width=45, command=root.destroy)
button.pack()
root.mainloop()
=========

It will call the following script (/home/rmartins/soft/ics_serial/getonelineS1.py) to get one line from the first serial:

=========
#!/usr/bin/python
import time
import Gpib
import sys
inst = Gpib.Gpib("ics")
exception = 0

line = []
def count(instrument):
    global exception
    try:
     result = inst.read(1)
     if result == "\n":
      print(''.join(line))
      exception = 1
      return exception
     else:
      line.append(result)      
    except: expection = 2
while True:
 if exception == 1: exit()
 count(1)

=========

The "ics" instrument definition used on the previous code is this one on /usr/local/etc/gpib.conf:

=========
device {
        minor = 0       /* minor number for interface board this device is connected to */
        name = "ics"    /* device mnemonic */
        pad = 4         /* The Primary GPIB Address */
        sad = 97        /* Secondary Address for Serial 1 */

        eos = 0xa       /* EOS Byte */
        set-reos = no /* Terminate read if EOS */
        set-bin = no /* Compare EOS 8-bit */
}


=========


Here's an example output of the code on the top window and "minicom" on lower window, computer serial (with minicom) connected to the first serial on the ICS 4896 where I wrote the string "10.002E-2V" to appear on the ICS device:

 You could do similar on command line using "ibterm" (from gpib Linux driver package)

Hope it helps.

Have fun!