Remote Control
R&S
®
ZNB/ZNBT
641
User Manual 1173.9163.02 ─ 38
HiSLIP protocol
The HiSLIP (High Speed LAN Instrument Protocol) is a protocol for TCP-based instru-
ments specified by the IVI foundation. Compared to its predecessor VXI-11, it provides
speed and other improvements. HiSLIP is encapsulated in VISA; the resource string
reads
TCPIP::<R&S ZNB/ZNBT IP address>::hislip0
.
The internal VISA library of the R&S
ZNB/ZNBT supports HiSLIP. If the connection
fails, access the Windows control panel of the controlled instrument and open port
4880 for incoming connections.
USB
Instruments equipped with controller LPW11 (currently R&S
ZNB40 variants 82 and 84
and R&S
ZNBT20) can be remote-controlled via USB. The VISA resource string for
controlling a device via USB has to be specified in the format
USB[board]::<Manufacturer ID>::<Device ID>::<Serial Number>::
INSTR
.
The manufacturer ID of Rohde & Schwarz is
0x0AAD
, the device ID of the
R&S
ZNBT20 is
0x01A7
, so a possible resource string is
USB1::0x0AAD::0x01A7::100067::INSTR
.
6.1.1 Starting a Remote Control Session
A remote control program must open a connection to the analyzer (using VISA func-
tionality), before it can send commands to the analyzer and receive device responses
(e.g. measurement data). The programming details depend on the library version used
and on the programming language. For this reason, the examples in chapters "Com-
mand Reference" and "Programming Examples" are reduced to the mere SCPI syntax.
Example controller programs may be obtained from the Rohde & Schwarz support cen-
ters. In many cases, it can be preferable to integrate the controller program into post-
processing tools (e.g. Microsoft Excel) in order to list, draw, or manipulate the mea-
sured values retrieved from the analyzer.
The following tools can make remote control more comfortable and faster:
●
Various software tools provide an easy-to-use graphical user interface for remote
control. An example is the "GPIB Explorer" (also termed "IECWIN32") which is pre-
installed on the analyzer. See
Chapter 6.1.2, "GPIB Explorer"
●
Instrument drivers provide an improved interface between the test software and the
test instruments. They perform the actual control of the instrument using higher-
level functions for operations such as configuring, reading from, writing to, and trig-
gering the instrument. This reduces development time, eliminating the need to
learn the specific command set for each instrument. In general, program develop-
ment is further simplified by a graphical program environment.
Rohde & Schwarz offers various R&S
ZNB/ZNBT driver types (LabView, LabWind-
ows/CVI, IVI, VXIplug&play...) for different programming languages. The drivers
Introduction to Remote Control