Reduce Time for Configuration, Measuring Signals,
and Analyzing Data Using a DMM
Our thanks to Agilent Technologies for allowing us to reprint this article.
Introduction
Traditionally, setting up a digital multimeter and
generating useful data has required you to have a bit of
instrument knowledge. Building your instrument
knowledge can be time consuming, and you might lack
confidence that your test is set up correctly. Perhaps you
can set up the DMM, but capturing and visualizing the
data takes too much time and requires multiple
programs.
New Agilent software reduces the learning curve and
provides an easy way to set up your Agilent DMM.
Agilent’s new DMM Connectivity Utility supports quicker
instrument setups and faster data capture and
visualization and addresses many of the difficulties you
face in using digital multimeters. With these applications,
you spend more time using your instrument and less
time learning and troubleshooting it.
less than 10 minutes. Using the data logging feature, he
was able observe that the precision resistor drifts in the
first 12 hours of burn-in then stabilizes. The engineer
went back to the resistor manufacturer designer and
they were able to resolve the issue quickly.
Problem 1:
“I don’t use my DMM with I/O because setting up
communication is complicated”
The traditional way to communicate to a DMM using a
remote interface is to send SCPI commands, but you
might need to configure the I/O using VISA, SICL or
VISA-COM. It’s easy to get lost in the acronyms.
What about addressing, or finding the right SCPI
commands, or even being sure that you are
communicating with the right instrument?
Getting started can be frustrating.
In this measurement brief, we’ll discuss different realworld problems you may face when you use DMMs and
show how the new Agilent DMM Utility can help.
We’ll discuss different real world problems that
engineers face when using DMMs. This brief will cover
how the new Agilent DMM apps can help immediately
with issues engineers face every day.
Snapshot
A manufacturing engineer at a medical device company
is having a yield issue with a current product. The circuit
in question works well one day, then has different output
voltage levels the next. He believes that the precision
resistor in the circuit hasn’t been burned in at the
manufacturer and is drifting in the first 24 hours of use.
In order to understand the resistor drift, he needs to be
able to measure and log the resistor value over the first
24 hours. He has an Agilent 34401A digital multimeter
on his bench, but doesn’t know the instrument very well.
This is a simple measurement and he doesn’t want to
spend a day to write a program to setup his
measurement, gather the data, and then transcribe it to
a spreadsheet to graph it. After downloading the Agilent
DMM Connection Utility, he’s able to setup his test in
Figure 1. View of connected DMMs using PC app
If you use Agilent IO Libraries Suite, identifying DMMs
connected to your PC is easier than ever. Agilent’s new
DMM Connectivity Utility will automatically identify
connected DMMs on your bus. Direct connections like USB
and GPIB will auto-identify and be recognized upon boot up
of the program. LAN and RS-232 still require a
configuration step in Agilent Connection Expert, but this is
easier than ever with Agilent IO Libraries Suite 16.3 and
above. Opening the PC DMM app will automatically identify
all the DMMs you have configured. This initial opening view
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shows the model of DMM and the I/O address it is
connected to.
Once the instrument is recognized by the DMM
Connectivity Utility in the bottom portion of the app, press
the corresponding play button to launch the connection and
you are communicating with the instrument.
of the instrument in the app. Just configure your DMM
using the front panel (or any interface of your choice),
then press the app’s Sync button. The DMM app
synchronizes with the DMM and exposes the DMM
configuration you made programmatically or using the
front panel or Web UI.
Problem 3:
Problem 2:
“I don’t want to learn the whole instrument; I just
want to make a measurement”
Engineers are often time constrained and don’t
necessarily want to spend time on extraneous activities.
If you want to make a simple measurement, you want to
ensure that the instrument is fully set up and not missing
a key parameter when running a test. Agilent’s DMM
Connectivity Utility presents the full setup for given
measurement functions. For example, if you want to do a
DCV measurement, the Measurement Menu presents to
you all the parameters you would want to use for DCV
measurements. The PC app and mobile app allow you to
have comprehensive functions configuration.
“I want to make a quick measurement and get my
data”
Once you get past the initial issues of connecting and
setting up the instrument, you still need to gather test
data. Often just getting the data into a usable format is a
laborious chore. Sometimes you just need to grab some
quick statistics. Taking 30 minutes to get the data, put it
into another program, and calculate the average of your
data could be 29 minutes longer than you want to spend.
Agilent’s PC DMM app enables you to gather your test
data and shows simple statistics (average, minimum and
maximum readings) in a real-time table format. Start
your acquisition and each reading is presented to you
with a time stamp of the reading, the value for each
reading, and a statistical summary of your data. For
more complicated analysis, the PC DMM app provides a
two-click export of the data to a.csv format, Microsoft
Excel format, or MATLAB format. You can save a screen
shot as a picture fi le or copy it to the clipboard. You can
even email the data or screenshot to yourself or a
colleague. The DMM app allows you to log data for
hours at a time and then export it in a few button pushes.
In addition to exporting the data, Agilent’s PC DMM app
automatically saves a datalog fi le of all data
acquisitions. Using the Data Manager, you can recall the
data and open it back up in the PC app which gives you
the same view as if you had just made the
measurements.
Figure 2. Examples of Measurement and DataLog Configuration
Menus in PC app
The Data Logger/Digitizer tab presents you with more
advanced functionality such as trigger menus, inprogram limit testing and digitizing setups. New
functionality allows you to set up the apps to email you
when a measurement fails a limit. Everything you would
want to set up your DMM is at your fingertips.
Figure 3. Data and Export views in PC app
If you prefer to use the instrument front panel to set up a
measurement, you can still do that and reflect the state
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Corporate Phone: 610-825-4990 • Sales: 800-832-4866 or 610-941-2400
Fax: 800-854-8665 or 610-828-5623 • Web: www.techni-tool.com
Problem 4:
“I want to quickly visualize my data and understand
it easily”
Very few of us can look at a group of numbers and make
quick, accurate judgments on the data set. Graphing the
data is preferable, but sometimes it just takes too much
effort to get a nice-looking chart that is easy to read and
understand.
The Agilent DMM apps can help you understand your
data visually in real time. The application has a trend
chart mode that displays your data across time. This
capability allows for a quick understanding of
measurement peaks, noise, or drift. Included in this
mode are measurement markers that allow you to
analyze the measurement between the markers, similar
to an oscilloscope. Customizable features such as
autoscale, zoom, and trace color allow you to modify
your view of the data. You can annotate measurement
events with in program notes too.
Figure 5. Histogram view in PC mode
Problem 5:
“I have a hard time getting a repeatable setup”
Whether you use the front panel or the Web user
interface, getting the same setup for your DMM every
time can be time consuming and error prone. On many
Agilent instruments, you can use the Store/Recall
feature of the DMM, but the feature may be hard to find
in the user interface. The PC DMM app can save the
state of every DMM that is loaded into its virtual bench.
Simply press the save button and name the file of your
state. The next time you want to run the same test, open
up the bench state fi le. This action sets up your
instrument.
Problem 6:
“I have different DMMs on my bench and they all
have different interfaces”
Figure 4. Trend chart view in the PC app
The apps also provide a histogram view of the data. This
view is useful for understanding the shape of your data’s
distribution. Determining if your data is Gaussian,
multimodal, or another distribution is very important in
many areas of test and measurement. Using the DMM
apps to create this view only takes a couple of steps and
can save you multiple hours of graph generation and
communication. Changing between the chart, histogram,
and data view only takes one click. All three views can
be used on the same data set. Of course, you can
always export the screenshot to a file or clipboard, as
mentioned above.
Over time, Agilent has improved the usability for each
generation of DMM. This has created differences in the
user interfaces of the DMMs. Many labs have different
vintages of Agilent DMMs acquired throughout the years.
It takes time to learn these different DMMs. Performing
an operation on a 34401A is different from doing it on
the 34410A. The Agilent DMM apps resolve this
problem. Agilent DMM Connectivity Utility’s unified
interface supports Agilent DMMs released in the last 25
years. The apps support older DMMs including 34401A,
34405A, 34410A, and 34411A as well as our latestgeneration 34450A, 34460A, and 34461A DMMs. The
PC DMM app can communicate using RS-232, GPIB,
USB, or LAN; with this I/O flexibility, you can now use
the same intuitive interface for all these DMMs.
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Corporate Phone: 610-825-4990 • Sales: 800-832-4866 or 610-941-2400
Fax: 800-854-8665 or 610-828-5623 • Web: www.techni-tool.com
Figure 6. The PC app can display four generations of DMMs
simultaneously using the multiple bench tile mode.
“I want to be on the leading edge of technology”
Figure 8. Measurement configure screen for mobile app
We all want the coolest toys and innovative solutions. In
addition to the full featured PC application, a companion
app named “DMM mobile” is available from the Apple
Store. This companion app views and controls a single
instrument. The mobile version of the app is limited to
LAN instruments only, but it does not require Agilent IO
Libraries. You can simply enter the IP address or
hostname of the instrument on the network and connect.
Figure 9. Histogram output for mobile app
Summary
Figure 7. Connection screen for mobile app
With the Agilent Digital Multimeter Connectivity Utility,
you can save time and effort. You can set up your DMM
and gather data in less time than you would spend wiring
up your measurement. Using the DMM apps makes
understanding your data easier and lets you visualize it
immediately or export it to popular tools such as Excel or
Word®. You can synchronize your measurements in
minutes. These applications help you use your
equipment right away, without the typical learning curve.
Agilent’s PC and mobile DMM applications are available
for free download from Agilent.com.
1547 N. Trooper Road • P. O. Box 1117 • Worcester, PA 19490-1117 USA
Corporate Phone: 610-825-4990 • Sales: 800-832-4866 or 610-941-2400
Fax: 800-854-8665 or 610-828-5623 • Web: www.techni-tool.com
1547 N. Trooper Road • P. O. Box 1117 • Worcester, PA 19490-1117 USA
Corporate Phone: 610-825-4990 • Sales: 800-832-4866 or 610-941-2400
Fax: 800-854-8665 or 610-828-5623 • Web: www.techni-tool.com