© Isothermal Technology
Page 74 of 102
923 milliK manual - issue: 1.10
7 Interfacing with milliK
The milliK is equipped with two RS232 ports and an Ethernet port that allow you to control
its operation remotely including control via Isotech’s “Cal Notepad” software (see section
8.6.3). The USB host port can be used to attach devices such as a mouse, keyboard or keypad
to provide alternative means of driving the milliK using its user interface. You can attach a
USB hub if you wish to use more than one USB device.
7.1 RS232 Interface
The milliK’s RS232 interfaces can be used to control the milliK, perform calibration and
diagnostic functions and to connect to and control one of Isotech’s temperature sources.
You can connect and send commands to either or both COM ports. A typical arrangement
would be to connect a PC to one COM port and control the instrument using software running
on that PC. The milliK treats the two COM ports as separate input streams so that they do not
interact with each other. If you were to connect separate PCs to the two COM ports then
measurements made by software running on one PC would not affect measurement made by
the other PC. There is of course only one measurement system that is being shared between
the COM ports and the front panel operator interface, so any measurements made by one of
these will slow down measurements made by any other. If you wish to control the milliK
using the RS232 interface alone, do not press the
Start
(F4) key at the opening screen, the
operator interface will then not request measurements, allowing faster measurements via the
RS232 interface.
You can connect an Isotech temperature source to either of the COM port and use the milliK
to control the source and make measurements under the control of the milliKs internal
software. This provides a very effective and simple automatic calibration system. The milliK
automatically detects when a COM port is connected to a temperature source allowing the
ports to configure themselves and making the two RS232 ports totally interchangeable (the
user can use either port interchangeably).
The command set uses the SCPI (Standard Commands for Programmable Instruments)
protocol (see section 8.6.4 for details).
