LabVIEW SignalExpress 2.0 User-Defined Step for Agilent 34970A

This User-Defined Step shows how to take temperature measurements in LabVIEW SignalExpress 2.0 with Agilent 34970A Data Acquisition/Switch Unit. LabVIEW SignalExpress 2.0 is an interactive measurement tool for generating, acquiring, analyzing, and saving signals through an interactive, dialog box-driven approach. No programming experience is required.

The attached User-Defined Step was created in LabVIEW 8.0. To run it, you will need to have LabVIEW SignalExpress 2.0 installed on your PC.

Download the attached UserStep_34970A_Release.zip file and unzip it somewhere on your harddrive. You will see two files UserStep_34970A.seproj and UserStep_34970A_build.llb. The former file references the latter file for the underlying LabVIEW VI on which this User-Defined Step was built on.

Double click on UserStep_34970A.seproj file. In the left-hand side of the screen you will see your User-Defined Step with 6 outputs: All Channels, then Channel 1 through 5. All Channel is a 1D array of numeric data, each element of which represent temperature measurement from the corresponding physical channel as specified in the Channel List (located in the Step Setup»Configure VI tab). For example if we want to measure temperature on channels 217 through 219, we would type 217:219 in the Channel List, and elements 0 through 2 of the All Channel array will contain the temperature data for those channels. 1D array data can be displayed only in a Table indicator. If you would like to see the temperature history updated in a Waveform Chart, then you will have to use scalar data from individual channels (Channel 1 through Channel 5). To do this, you click on the channel of your choice and drag it over to the View Data section. This example can show individual temperature data only in the first 5 channels as listed in the Channel List.

When you run the program continuously you can control the delay between consecutive samples by clicking on the Step Setup»Execution Control tab and entering a value for the Pre-execution delay (ms) or/and Post-execution delay (ms).

If you would like to introduce alarms and conditions on when to start and/or stop logging data you can click on the Recording Options tab and enter the appropriate parameters.  

The Run button runs the program continuously. The Run Once button runs the program only once.

Logging data has never been easier with LabVIEW Signal Express 2.0. To transfer existing data from a Waveform Graph to an Excel spreadsheet right-click on the plot and select Export To»Microsoft Excel. Keep in mind that you can export only the visible points in the chart. If you would like to export all points (beyond one screen of the Waveform Chart) you will have to click on the Record button in the tool bar before you run your step. Clicking the Record button will prompt you to select the channel you want to acquire data from and will automatically run the step. A log file with the current time stamp will show up in the lower left-hand side of the screen. Click on the plus sign before the log file to display all logged channels. Right-click on the desired channel and select Export to Microsoft Excel.
Note: The maximum number of rows in Microsoft Excel prior to 2007 is 2¹⁶ (65,536) and 2²⁰ (1,048,576) in Microsoft Excel 2007 and later.

For more information on how to use LabVIEW SignalExpress 2.0 please refer to the user manual.

Requirements

Filename: userstep_34970a.zip

Software Requirements

Application Software: SignalExpress Development System 2.0

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