Support for AR488 GPIB?

Materialsguy · January 21, 2026, 4:40am

Before I delve into troubleshooting, I thought I would ask here. I am converting my older NI GPIB card/cable instruments to the AR488 USB Serial/GPIB interface. Does SweepMe support the AR488 Interface? In a nutshell, the AR488 GPIB controller is an Arduino-based controller for interfacing with IEEE488 GPIB devices via USB. The port shows up as a PC serial port which is then configured (using the Arduino) to a specific GPIB address, which is what the instrument sees.

Axel · January 21, 2026, 7:27am

Hi,

thanks for highlighting the AR488!
I did not know about this project so far.

I know a similar adapter from Prologix

that is also controlled via RS-232 and then translates it into GPIB.
We have added support for these Prologix adapter. The user can go to

menu “File” → “Options” → “Ports”

where one can register a COM port that is then used to display a GPIB resource like
“GPIB::20::Prologix@COM7”

More information:
https://wiki.sweep-me.net/wiki/GPIB#Prologix_controller

According to this webpage
https://sdfa3.org/david/ar488/commands.html
the command set of the AR488 should be fully compatible with the one of the Prologix adapter.

So, there is a good chance that it just works out of the box.

The source code of the Prologix GPIB adapters can be found as part of the pysweepme library

github.com/SweepMe/pysweepme

src/pysweepme/Ports.py

eaef3d179


      
                      if port.device == self.port_ID:
                          debug(
                              "Identification for COM ports is an experimental feature and will probably change in the future.",
                          )
                          port_info = port.hwid
                          break
          
                  return port_info
          
          
          class PrologixGPIBcontroller:
              def __init__(self, address):
                  # basically the address could be used for COM ports but also for Ethernet
                  # at the moment, only COM is supported, but Ethernet could be added later
                  self.set_address(address)
          
                  self._current_gpib_ID = None
          
                  self.ID_port_properties = {}
          
                  self.port = serial.Serial()

that is also used by SweepMe!

If you figure out whether it works, we would love to hear from you and put the information into our Wiki.

Thanks and best
Axel

Materialsguy · January 21, 2026, 6:40pm

Axel,

Thanks for the reply. I performed a couple of quick checks using equipment that I know works with the AR488 hardware, and there are problems running under Prologic GPIB with SweepMe. However I do not want to pursue this any further at the moment because I have connection options which I know are working with SweepMe: National Instruments PC card and GPIB cables. I will log this one as something to re-visit in the future.

Axel · January 21, 2026, 7:23pm

Thanks for the feedback!

We indeed have not added all commands that are provided by Prologix, but those that are needed to send and receive messages including changing GPIB addresses. It means that the SweepMe! port manager automatically changes the GPIB address at the Prologix adapter, when multiple instruments are connected to the adapter. We once helped a customer to replace NI GPIB adapter to interface with Keithley 236 or Keithley 2400 and this worked reliably.

If you figure out which commands from the Prologix command set are missing to control your equiment let us know!

Best, Axel