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Getting Started 3

Agilent InfiniiVision 3000 X-Series Oscilloscopes Programmer's Guide 63

3 Click OK.

To reference the Agilent VISA COM library in Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0:

1 Choose Project>References... from the main menu.

2 In the References dialog, check the "VISA COM 3.0 Type Library".

3 Click OK.

Opening the Oscilloscope Connection via the IO Library

PC controllers communicate with the oscilloscope by sending and receiving

messages over a remote interface. Once you have opened a connection to

the oscilloscope over the remote interface, programming instructions

normally appear as ASCII character strings embedded inside write

statements of the programing language. Read statements are used to read

query responses from the oscilloscope.

For example, when using the Agilent VISA COM library in Visual Basic

(after opening the connection to the instrument using the

ResourceManager object's Open method), the FormattedIO488 object's

WriteString, WriteNumber, WriteList, or WriteIEEEBlock methods are used

for sending commands and queries. After a query is sent, the response is

read using the ReadString, ReadNumber, ReadList, or ReadIEEEBlock

methods.

The following Visual Basic statements open the connection and send a

command that turns on the oscilloscope's label display.

Dim myMgr As VisaComLib.ResourceManager

Dim myScope As VisaComLib.FormattedIO488

Set myMgr = New VisaComLib.ResourceManager

Set myScope = New VisaComLib.FormattedIO488

' Open the connection to the oscilloscope. Get the VISA Address from the

' Agilent Connection Expert (installed with Agilent IO Libraries Suite).

Set myScope.IO = myMgr.Open("<VISA Address>")

' Send a command.

myScope.WriteString ":DISPlay:LABel ON"

The ":DISPLAY:LABEL ON" in the above example is called a program

message. Program messages are explained in more detail in "Program

Message Syntax" on page 1139.

Initializing the Interface and the Oscilloscope

To make sure the bus and all appropriate interfaces are in a known state,

begin every program with an initialization statement. When using the

Agilent VISA COM library, you can use the resource session object's Clear

method to clears the interface buffer:

Agilent Technologies InfiniiVision 3000 X-Series Programmer's Guide

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