Homemade Wideband Current Transformer

[Cydrome Leader]

[...]

The spectrum analyzer expects to plot to a plotter, so that plot was
acquired over GPIB, then run through a HPGL to PNG filter. You can tweak
options to get different resolution and colours / line thicknesses for
the various elements of the plot.

Have you used any GPIB to USB converters that function and didn't cost
$500?

No, actually.

It seems silly to run out and buy a PCI card for this and be chained to
one desktop forever.

Yes, I use a old SFF PC just for that, running a linux distribution. It
does all the "GPIB stuff", has scripts to automate various
"experiments". It's headless, just a box, but I can remote in to it of
course. For the rare times I go "on the road" when I need GPIB I do have
a NI USB interface, but it is not quite as reliable.

The thing that causes most problems is handling a "screen dump" from the
various instruments. I think they all want to be controlling a HP
plotter then, instead of being controlled by a GPIB master. I never
really got to the bottom of it, but I needed the PCI card to get it to
work reliably.

Personally i use the Prologix, LLC devices; nicely better price. Seem to
work just fine.
Back in the day i used to be a bit if a GPIB guru. Ask me by PM to
discuss the instrument to plotter things. We may need to trick the
interface a bit to read the control words that activate the plotter.
However they are usually settable in the instrument GPIB menus. Some
configurations do not need the control words (promiscuous transmit and
receive).

I've heard good things about this adapter that is alleged to be 100%
compatible with Agilent's controller. And the price can't be beat.

http://bmjd.biz/

At $80 shipped, it might be worth the gamble.

 

[Cydrome Leader]

[...] We call them "wall current
monitors". Here's a picture, if anyone is interested:
<http://cern.ch/psring/psring/showpicture.php?section=03>

Jeroen Belleman

Sadly, the link to the drawing fails.

Yes, I'm not very surprised. It's a php script putting out a
TIFF picture. It has 'header("Content-type: image/tif");' as
the first line producing output. That works fine for Mozilla-
type browsers, but IE doesn't seem to understand it. So I put
in a quick hack that makes it work in-house at least. Of course,
you are outside.

If you have a suggestion towards a good fix, I'm all ears.

Jeroen Belleman

it works in IE 9 for me, but you may need to force these headers

Content-Type:
Coontent-Disposition:

for the last one, you'll have to fiddle with forced download options and
set a file name, otherwise some browsers will think the file is just
file.php

also, the behavior in browsers can differ if you click on a link or try to
save target as. Saving target as can cause problems.

 

[Jeroen Belleman]

Jeroen Belleman wrote:
[...] We call them "wall current
monitors". Here's a picture, if anyone is interested:
<http://cern.ch/psring/psring/showpicture.php?section=03>

Jeroen Belleman

Sadly, the link to the drawing fails.

Yes, I'm not very surprised. It's a php script putting out a
TIFF picture. It has 'header("Content-type: image/tif");' as
the first line producing output. That works fine for Mozilla-
type browsers, but IE doesn't seem to understand it. So I put
in a quick hack that makes it work in-house at least. Of course,
you are outside.

If you have a suggestion towards a good fix, I'm all ears.

Jeroen Belleman

it works in IE 9 for me, but you may need to force these headers

Content-Type:
Coontent-Disposition:

for the last one, you'll have to fiddle with forced download options and
set a file name, otherwise some browsers will think the file is just
file.php

also, the behavior in browsers can differ if you click on a link or try to
save target as. Saving target as can cause problems.

OK, thanks for the hints. It should work better now.

Jeroen Belleman

 

[Cydrome Leader]

On 2013-04-16 05:47, Robert Baer wrote:
Jeroen Belleman wrote:
[...] We call them "wall current
monitors". Here's a picture, if anyone is interested:
<http://cern.ch/psring/psring/showpicture.php?section=03>

Jeroen Belleman

Sadly, the link to the drawing fails.


Yes, I'm not very surprised. It's a php script putting out a
TIFF picture. It has 'header("Content-type: image/tif");' as
the first line producing output. That works fine for Mozilla-
type browsers, but IE doesn't seem to understand it. So I put
in a quick hack that makes it work in-house at least. Of course,
you are outside.

If you have a suggestion towards a good fix, I'm all ears.

Jeroen Belleman

it works in IE 9 for me, but you may need to force these headers

Content-Type:
Coontent-Disposition:

for the last one, you'll have to fiddle with forced download options and
set a file name, otherwise some browsers will think the file is just
file.php

also, the behavior in browsers can differ if you click on a link or try to
save target as. Saving target as can cause problems.

OK, thanks for the hints. It should work better now.

Jeroen Belleman

No problem. it seems to "pass" some quick tests for making browers know
it's a tiff and a file.