Agipibi : An Arduino to GPIB Interface

Description

Agipibi is a cheap GPIB interface based on the Arduino Mega board or higher models. It connects scientific instruments using IEEE 488 buses to a computer, or the micro-controller itself if you integrate it in your own code. This project goal is to provide the best open source implementation of a GPIB controller on prototyping platforms.

Features

system controller role
act as talker or listener in full address space
multiple concurrent listeners
switch instruments to remote mode
(un)lock front panels
fast reading (Arduino is buffering chunks of data)
group trigger
timeout handling when reading bus

Work-in-progress:

SRQ request interruption and serial polling
more examples for Tektronix scopes
bridge to LabVIEW with a Python script (TCP server)

Usage

This interface was designed for Arduino Mega 1280, to use other boards you'll have to edit the pin mapping at the top of arduino_mega.ino sketch. Be careful about the SRQ line that should have an interrupt capable output.

Connect your GPIB bus/instrument to the board with no additional component. You'll find examples in the documentation directory.
Build and upload the 'arduino_mega.ino' sketch in Arduino IDE.
Use the Python module 'agipibi.py' to begin tests. Examples are provided. It's best to start in a scenario that doesn't require a controller or bi-directional communication. At first I put my scope in Talker mode and had it transmit a waveform using menus only. The following code would be enough in this case.

from agipibi import Agipibi
dev = Agipibi()
if dev.interface_ping():
    dev.gpib_init(controller=False)
    waveform = dev.gpib_read() # press the 'Transmit' scope button
    print 'Received %d bytes' % len(waveform)
else:
    print 'Arduino is not responding'

Authors

Thibault VINCENT tibal@reloaded.fr
Mathias Helsen helsen.mathias@gmail.com

Thanks

Agipibi was inspired by similar projects:

A japanese blogger article http://bananawani-mc.blogspot.fr/2010/09/arduinogpib.html
GPL code from Dennis Dingeldein http://www.spurtikus.de/basteln/gpib_en.html
USB to GPIB Controller by LPVO http://lpvo.fe.uni-lj.si/en/research/electronics/
GPIB USB Adapter by Steven Casagrande https://github.com/Galvant/gpibusb-firmware

Agipibi

Install / Use

README