Agilent Technologies 34970A, User Manual, Page: 243 / 356

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Chapter 6 Application Programs
Example Programs for Excel 7.0
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6
Example Programs for Excel 7.0
This section contains two example programs written using Excel macros
(
Visual Basic® for Applications ) to control the 34970A/34972A. Using
Excel, you can send SCPI commands to configure the instrument and
then record measurement data on the Excel spreadsheet.
To write an Excel macro you must first open a module in Excel. Go to the
Insert
menu, choose Macro , and then Module . Name this module “Send
Commands” by clicking on the tab with the right mouse button. Create
another module and name it “Port Configuration”. You will use the “Port
Configuration” module to configure all of the overhead required to
communicate with the instrument over the interface. You will use the
“Send Commands” module to send the SCPI commands to the
instrument using the “Port Configuration” module.
Two Excel examples are included in this section. To enter the first
example (“takeReadings”), type the text as shown on page 244 into the
“Send Commands” module. Then type the text for configuring the
interface as shown on page 245
into the “Port Configuration” module.
After entering the information for both modules, go to a spreadsheet and
run the example program. Note that you must run the macro from a
spreadsheet. With the cursor in the spreadsheet, select
Macro from the
Tools
menu. Then double-click on the “takeReadings” macro in the
Macro dialog box.
To run the second example (“ScanChannels”), type the text as shown on
page 247 into the “Send Commands” module and reuse the “Port
Configuration” module from the first example (page 245).
Make any changes necessary to suit your application in the “Send
Commands” module. You must enter the information in the modules
exactly as shown or an error will be generated. If several system errors
occur while attempting to run a macro, you may have to reboot your PC
to get the GPIB port to work properly.
Note : To use these examples with Windows  3.1, you will need to modify
the declarations at the top of the “Port Configuration” module. Change
visa32.dll to visa.dll in all declarations.
34970A Refresh UG.book Page 243 Wednesday, February 17, 2010 12:34 PM