57
Remote Control
ware”. In addition, the “Found New Hardware Wizard” is
displayed. Only in this case the USB-VCP driver must be
installed. Further information about the USB-VCP driver ins-
tallation you can find in the installation guide internal of the
driver file.
In addition, you may use the free software “HM-
Explorer”. This Windows application offers ¸HMC8012
instruments a terminal function and the option to create
screenshots.
9.2 USB TMC
A modern alternative to the virtual COM port (VCP) is the
control via USB TMC class. TMC stands for „Test & Mea-
surement Class“ which indicates that the connected mea-
surement instrument can be recognized without special
Windows drivers if VISA drivers are installed and that it
can be used directly in corresponding environments. The
GPIB interface serves as model to the structure of the
TMC design. A major benefit of the USB TMC class is that
by sampling specific registers the user can determine if
commands have been terminated and if they have been
processed correctly. However, the communication via VCP
requires analysis and polling mechanisms within the cont-
rolling software which may significantly strain the interface
of the measurement instruments. The TMC status registers
solve this problem with the USB TMC in the same manner
as is the case with the GPIB interface for the hardware,
namely via corresponding control lines.
9.2.1 USB TMC Configuration
The ¸HMC8012 require a generic USB instrument
driver to be operated in USB-TMC mode. The USB Test &
Measurement class (USB-TMC) is a protocol that enables
GPIB-like communication via USB interfaces and a sepa-
rate instrument class of the USB specification. The USB-
TMC protocol supports service requests, trigger and other
GPIB-specific commands. The driver is included in the
NI-VISA package (Virtual Instrument Software Architecture)
and can be downloaded at http://www.ni.com/downloads/
ni-drivers/.
You need to first install the NI-VISA drivers on your Win
-
dows system. Please download the most recent version
of the NI-VISA driver package. Extract the previously
downloaded driver package and follow the installation
instructions.
The following requirement for USB-VCP driver installation are
necessary:
1 ¸HMC8012 with an activated USB-VCP interface.
2 A PC with operating system Windows XP™, VISTA™, Windows
7™, Windows 8™ or Windows 10™ (32 or 64Bit).
3 Administrator rights are necessary for the installation of the
driver. If an error message regarding spelling errors appears,
the rights to install the driver are not given. In this case, please
contact your IT department to obtain the necessary rights.
The HMExplorer software does not support the communication via
USB TMC.
Below please find an example for NI-VISA 5.4.1:
Select “Next“ to start the installation and follow the
installation instructions.
In this step, please select “NI-VISA xxx --> Leave this fea-
ture and its subfeatures installed locally“.
Fig. 9.3: NI-VISA 5.4.1
Fig. 9.4: NI-VISA installation instructions
Fig. 9.5: NI-VISA feature installation locally
Summary of Contents for HMC8012
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