Agilent 66332A DC Source RS232 Ubuntu 12.04 SCPI

Question

I have an Agilent 66332A DC Source, and I want to program it so that I can set the current, voltage, and output on/off. I'm using Ubuntu 12.04 64bit so the drivers don't work. I've contacted Agilent support, and they gave me nothing. I know that the DC source uses SCPI. Is there some way that I can talk to the DC source using the terminal and send SCPI commands? I've tried minicom, but I couldn't get it to work. I'm using a RS232 connection.

Answer 1

There might be manual for this DC source so read SCPI commands from there.

I assume that minicom sends line-feed character after each enter you press, but SCPI requires \n for command separator. Hence the Minicom does not work.

However you can just echo commands to serial port from bash command line.

1. Setup serial port

   stty -F /dev/ttyS0 raw speed 9600 -cstopb cs8 -ixon

2. Echo commands to /dev/ttyS0

   echo -en '*RST\n' > /dev/ttyS0

Notice: I'm assuming your device is connected to /dev/ttyS0.