Test of Time power supply contest winners announced

Earlier this week, the winners of Agilent’s Test of Time power supply contest were announced. Here is a link to the press release:

http://www.agilent.com/about/newsroom/presrel/2012/25jun-em12080.html

I found the Test of Time contest to be quite interesting and I was honored to be one of the judges for the contest. The contest invited engineers who were using vintage Agilent or Hewlett-Packard (is there a “vintage” Agilent supply?) or even the older Harrison Labs power supplies (HP power supplies started as Harrison Labs power supplies) to describe their application, writing about how the instrument has been used over the years and how they are using it today. We received quite a few entries and we had extensive discussions to choose what we considered the best entry based on the contest rules. Go to this link for the home page of the contest and select the Gallery tab to see all of the entries:
http://powercontest.tm.agilent.com/

Richard Factor, of Little Ferry, NJ (I did not know he was from NJ until after I submitted my choices as a judge) won one of the prizes: an N6705B DC Power Analyzer with three modules installed. Quite a nice prize, and well deserved based on Richard’s entry!

Richard used an old HP 6186B in an application that basically turned his Toyota Prius into a backup generator for his house during a power failure. Now that’s what I call a unique application! You can read more about it at these links:

http://priups.com/agilent%20contest/hp-6186b-entry.htm

http://www.priups.com/ (you must select the correct answer….I’m sure you’ll figure it out….)

Simon Jensen of Husum, Germany, also won an N6705B for his entry. Simon’s entry was chosen by readers of the stories who voted for their favorite. Simon used an Agilent 6632B power supply as an inexpensive load to sink current from a switching power supply he built. As Simon correctly points out, the nameplate on this power supply does not reveal all of its capabilities. It says 0 to 5 A, but it can also sink a programmable, regulated current like an electronic load. So the nameplate should say -5 A to +5 A, as pointed out by Simon!

Having worked for HP/Agilent on power products for more than 32 years (since 1980), it was not too surprising for me to see so many interesting applications for our products. I was also delighted, and not too surprised, to see how many of our older power supplies are still out there, providing power, decades after they were introduced! Now that’s what I call “vintage voltage”!!

Using Power Supply Status Registers in your Program – Not So Scary

Hello everyone!  Today I am going to talk about how to use the Operation Status and Questionable Status Registers on Agilent’s power supplies.  All of Agilent’s SCPI based power supplies use these registers.  Figure 1 is a pictorial representation of the status system of the Agilent N6700 Modular Power System:

 

Figure 1 N6700 Status Model

 

Looks pretty daunting, doesn’t it?  After reading this blog post, it won’t be so scary anymore.   There are many great uses for these registers in your programs.

The Questionable Status Group lets you know if your power supply is in an abnormal operating state.  Sometimes your power supply will be in protect mode when these states are encountered.  You typically want to query this to make sure that your power supply does not transition to one of these abnormal states.  Here is a list of all the members of the Questionable Status Group:

Figure 2 N6700 Questionable Status Group

The Operation Status Group provides the normal operating modes of the power supply.  You typically want to query this register to either make sure that the power supply is either in the correct operating state or that it has completed some task (such as initiating a trigger or performing a measurement).  Here are the different members of the Operation Status Group:

 Figure 3 Operation Status Group

There are multiple ways to program using the registers.  The main way that I query the resisters is using the Condition Register.  The Condition Register will give you the real time status of the register.  Reading this register does not clear it.   A good example of using this is when you are initiating a triggered measurement:

 

INIT:ACQ (@1)                                    //This initiates the Acquire trigger system

Do

STAT:OPER:COND? (@1)       //Check the status register

               status = read

Loop Until (status And 8) = 8

*TRG  

Looking at Fig 3, 8 is the WTG_MEAS bit.  Once this is true, the unit is ready to be triggered.  This lets you make sure that you are not triggering the unit before the initiation is done.  Note that all of the statuses are referred to by the instrument by their by the bit weight (listed in the tables as the decimal value).  When you are looking for multiple statues, you need to add the bit weights.

 

The other main method of Querying the registers is using the Event register.  The Event Register is different than the Condition Register in that it keeps track of transitions in the statuses.  It does not matter when the status change happened, the Event Register will catch it and keep it until it is read back.   You do need to tell the power supply which statuses you are concerned with using the Negative Transition (STAT:OPER:NTR) and the Positive Transition (STAT:OPER:PTR) commands.  The Event Register is a latching register that will clear after it is read.  An example of using this register is when you want to make sure that there were no momentary transitions into an unwanted status.  In the following example, you want to make sure that your power supply does not go into the Unregulated mode (UNR) before you make a current measurement:

STAT:QUES:PTR 1024,(@1)            // This is the UNR bit

STAT:QUES:NTR 0, (@1)                // We are only interested in a positive transition

Body of  your program

STAT:QUES:EVEN?                        //Query the register

Status = readback

If status And 1024 =1024 then

 exit                                     //If the unit went UNR, exit

Else

                MEAS:CURR? (@1)      //measure current

                Curr=readback

End if

 

In this case, UNR is bit weight 1024.  When the unit transitions to the unregulated state (the bit transitions from 0 to 1), this bit gets set. 

As you can tell by Figure 1, there is a bunch more that you can do using status, including Service Requests but I will save those for a possible future blog post.

Please feel free to post any questions or comments here.