ST2883 Series Operation Manual Chapter 8 SCPI Command reference
8-2
To restart commands from the highest level, a semicolon (;) must be used as the separator, and then a colon (:),
which shows that the restarted command is a command at the top of the command tree, must follow.
For example: COMP:AREA:STAT ON;:COMP:AREA:RANG 0,6000
The GPIB common commands can be placed in previous, middle or last on a multiple command line,
partitioned off with semicolons.
For example: COMP:AREA ON;*trg;DIFF ON
Short-form rules:
If complete commands and parameters (called long form afterwards) have four characters or less, the long form
and short form are the same.
When the long form has more than 4 characters:
1. And if the 4th character is a vowel, the short form is the first 3 characters of the long form.
2. If the 4th character is not a vowel, the short form is the first 4 characters.
For example:
TIME abbreviates to TIME.
TRIGger abbreviates to TRIG.
DELete abbreviates to DEL.
FREQuency abbreviates to FREQ.
If the long form mnemonic is defined as a phrase rather than a single word, then the long form mnemonic is the
first character of the first word(s) followed by the entire last word. The above rules, when the long form
mnemonic is a single word, are then applied to the resulting long form mnemonic to obtain the short form.
For example: Mass MEMory abbreviates to MMEM (long form is MMEMory)
Impulse VOLTage abbreviates to IVOLT(long form is IVOLTage)
NOTE: At the process of commands, the instrument does not distinguish letter case including units.
For example: disp:page meas = DISP:PAGE MEAS = DiSp:PAGe MEas
8.2 Data format
ST2883 outputs the waveform data using the ASCII via the GPIB bus. The format is described as follows.
Waveform Data Trans-format:
<DATA[1][0]><DATA[1][1]><DATA[2][0]><DATA[2][1]><DATA[3][0]><DATA[3][1] ……
<DATA[960][0]> <DATA[960][1]>
<NL^END>
Figure 8-2 Data format
In Figure 8-2, <NL> is New Line character (decimal 10), ^END is EOI terminator signal. If waveform data is ready,
ST2883 sends out waveform data in ASCII string with <NL ^END> as the terminal character, otherwise ST2883
returns <NL ^END> directly.
As shown in figure 8-2, each point data of a waveform is returned as two ASCII codes. ST2883 sends the two
ASCII codes, the first output ASCII code is the 4 high bits and the second output ASCII code is the 4 low bits.
Controller should compose the two ASCII codes as one HEX data for displaying and calculating.
NOTE: As soon as the query command is sent PC should be in receiving status so as to avoid data lose.
8.3 Notation conventions and definitions
1.
The following characters are used in the command syntax.
: A colon is used to separate the higher level commands and the lower level commands.
; The semicolon can be used as a separator to execute multiple commands on a single line.
