Keysight B2902B SMU driver feedback

Hi Axel.

Thats puzzeling. I replied to that question in the same way I did to the other questions. To me, my reply looks identical to the one I posted before in that thread. Is it not visible to you? This is how it is presented to me:

Best wishes,
Christian

Hi Christian,

for me it looks like

Maybe the “Pending” means that the message is not yet added. I will check what has happened.

Ah, OK, so you don’t see ANY of my messages in that thread. Maybe because Felix needs to approve those?

I see your other messages and resolved the points accordingly. Just for this first issue, I can’t see your response. I have forwarded the problem to Felix and let’s see what he can say about it.

Have you started a review before posting those two replies? Seems in that case github automatically associates replies to comments to the review which must be submitted explicitly.
Other users are also complaining about this confusing behaviour of github: Make it clear that "PENDING" comments have to be submitted · community · Discussion #10369 · GitHub

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That is the explaination, I did not start a review. Thanks for finding the solution!

I still wonder why some comments have been directly added while other need to be added by starting a review.

The changes are now merged. I uploaded a new version to the server.
@Christian You can download/test it after login with your SweepMe! account and if everything works, we can release it for everyone.

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Together with the E3632A driver, I’ve used this version of the B2902B driver now for over a day and it works fine. We should release it in its current version.

On a sidenote, I can confirm that the AUTO ranging of the sourcing is the default setting. Therefore, we could leave this command out as its setting should be taken care of by the “*RST” command during the initialization.

Best wishes,
Christian

I’ve published the version from last Friday now. Thanks again for the contribution and testing!

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Dear all.

Could we increase the limit for the field “PulseCount” from 99 to at least 300? I’ve implemented multiple pulse capabilities into the B290x driver to use the averaging function of the oscilloscope for noise reduction and more samples than 99 would be very welcome.

I will post the updated B290X driver once I’ve tested it in the field for some time.

Best wishes,
Christian

Hm, seems we didn’t set a maximum on this field and 99 is the default limit of Qt Spin Box.
But should be easy to change.

Do you think there are applications where the PulseCount is not constant but a user might want to change the value dynamically during the measurement? In that case we could replace the spin box with a normal text field so entering {Parameter_Syntax} becomes possible.

I’ve noticed that with the current configuration, the B2902B is capable to emit 1ms pulses with <1ms off-time between them. So for larger (discrete), thermally inert DUTs that do not cool down during the off-time, the amount of pulses could be used to keep the emitted power constant by adjusting it in accordance to the voltage or current.

I’ve created a commit for the new driver version that allows for multiple pulses per sequence step. A corresponding pullrequest was created as well.

The capability to emit multiple pulses per sequence step was added to the driver. For this, the sweep mode was misused by setting start and stop voltage/current to the same value.

As this also works for a single pulse as well as the DC mode, the initialization was modified to have the B290xB SMU run in the sweep mode all the time, even if the pulse count in the GUI is set to 1 or if the SMU is used for DC output. No drawbacks were observed in practical use other than that the symbol on the display of the SMU shows a sweep rather than a DC or pulse graphic.

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Hi Christian, thanks for the revised version. Due to vacation time, there was some delay in processing the drivers, but I will have a look at it this week and create official server versions.

We have updated the SMU module to change the Pulse count spin box into a line edit which allows to enter numbers greater than 99 but also to use the curly brackets {…} parameter syntax in the field from now on.

To use these changes, you can either update to SweepMe! 1.5.6.20 that was released today or update the version of the SMU module in the version manager of SweepMe! by activating the latest version.

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New commit with seperated DC and PULSE commands has been created on GITHUB, but was tested with .19 only so far.

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Thanks for the changes. I went through the code, pushed some smaller changes and approved. If you are fine, we can proceed with the merge.

The contributed changes are now merged. A new driver version was uploaded to the server and is now available to all users to work with the pulse mode of the Agilent B29xx models.

Thanks @Christian for the contribution!

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