Test and Measurement Forum

Hi,
I am trying to run a USB-TC08 from an old version (5.01) of HP-VEE (now Agilent VEE). According to the manual I only have to change the .dll and .vh files and change the routines to their legacy mode equivalent. However, I cannot get the program to run. Is there anybody who has experience in running the USB-TC08 in legacy mode?
Thanks,
Friederike

Hi we no longer produce example for Agilent Vee, however can you try the attached examples.

Kind regards

Hi,

unfortunately I can't open your example, as it is written with a newer version of VEE than mine. Is there any possibility that you print the program & sub-programs into a pdf and I'll take it from there?

Friederike

Unfortunately we do support Vee anymore and as such we cannot produce any examples.

Have you tried searching to see if there are programs that can change the code to an older version?

Not sure if it is possible.

Kind regards

"Unfortunately we do support Vee anymore and as such we cannot produce any examples."
This is very disapointing - after all, you still advertise that you suport VEE. It was one of the reasons for choosing the Picotech product. At least this explains why the responses I got from Technical Support were not useful at all.

Do I understand you correctly that you can't even open the file you sent me previously yourself? I did not ask for a new example, I only asked for the same example printed into a pdf, which should be easy enough to do.

Friederike

Hi Friederike,

We do not produce examples in Vee anymore as we found that the amount of support enquiries was very little. There are numerous programming languages and numerous versions of the enviroments that run the software.

As much as we like to help we cannot cater for every single combination, however what I can do is try and find our copy of vee and install it (not installed on any machine at the moment). I will try and save it in an older format.

Kind regards

Hi Friederike,

I have dug out our copy of Agilent Vee 7.5 and have taken some screen shots of the various functionalities. The files are zipped up.

I hope this helps.

Kind regards

Hi,

I have downloaded an evaluation copy of Agilent VEE, which can read your USB sample files. I am now trying to recreate the program in my old HP VEE version.
I have found that the ond HP VEE creates an error message whenever it comes accross the word 'float' in the .vh file. This means that I can't use the 'proper' USB mode.
I am now trying to write a program in the USB legacy mode (I am using the sample program for serial mode as basis for that).
I can open the TC-08 successfully and also set the channels successfully. I also call the usb_legacy_run routine successfully. However, I have difficulties reading the temperature with usb_tc08_legacy_get_temp. This routine asks for an argument 'temp'. The manual (p.33) calls it: 'Pointer to a location where readins are to be placed'. However, I have no idea that this means. Could you please tell me what do I have to put in for this argument?
I am attaching the program I have written.
Kind regards,
Friederike

Hi

In the call to usb_tc08_legacy_get_temp, 'temp' is a pointer, so the caller needs to pass the address of the memory location where the value of temp should be written.

I believe this is done in VEE by creating both an input and output terminal for this parameter. See the image below, where both "temp_buffer" and "overflow" are pointers.



Robin

Dear Robin,

in usb_tc08_get_single the parameters 'temp_buffer' and 'overflow' are arrays. Is 'temp' in usb_tc08_legacy_get_temp also an array? If so, can you please tell me the size of the array? How can I find out how that array is supposed to look like?

Thanks,
Friederike

Hi again,
I can answer my last question partly myself now: usb_tc08_legacy_get_temp expects a scalar for 'temp' not an array. The question however remains: what should the value of this scalar be? Is it a constant? I do not understand the description in the manual (p.33) at all that says:
'Pointer to a location where readings are to be placed. Each reading should be compared with 2147483647L or LONG_MAX (include limits.h) to check for overflows. An overflow occurs when the input signal is higher than the measuring range of the USB TC-08.'
What is LONG_MAX? What is limits.h?
Can you please enlighten me on this?
Many thanks,
Friederike

Hi I think I may have an answer for you.

In the header file, for the usb_tc08_legacy_set_channel function the two parameters, offset and slope are not included. Whilst they are not used they still need to be included in the header file as well as the main body of the code.

Give that a go. Let me know how you get on.

Kind regards

Hi,

I am sorry, I do not understand how your answer relates to my question about the argument 'temp' for the function 'usb_tc08_legacy_get_temp' ?

Friederike

Hi

The function usb_tc08_legacy_get_temp will only return a single temperature value.

LONG_MAX is the maximum value of the 'long' data type in C, which is 2147483647 on a 32-bit operating system.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limits.h

Robin

Just to add to my previous post. It had nothing to do with your specific question but I did notice that when I loaded your code up I noticed those two parameters missing.

Kind regards