Teledyne LeCroy WaveExpert series Automation Manual - Manual (Page 15)

C
HAPTER
O
NE
Overview
The following table summarizes the differences between the two remote control possibilities:
IEEE 488.2 Control Automation Control
Physical Transport
GPIB, TCP/IP over Ethernet Inter-process using COM, inter-PC
using DCOM (TCP/IP)
Textual parsing of instrument
responses required
Yes. All instrument responses need
‘parsing’ to extract useful information.
No. Each element in the Automation
hierarchy appears as a “variable” to
the Automation client.
Compatibility with previous LeCroy
DSOs
Very good. In most cases remote
control applications written for older
DSOs will work without modification.
None. Automation is a new standard
first introduced with LeCroy’s
X-Stream DSOs.
Ability to control the oscilloscope
application from “inside the box”
Yes, by using the TCP/IP (VICP)
protocol to talk to the “local host”
Yes, natively
Ease of Use Not trivial. It’s easier using a tool such
as ActiveDSO* that hides some of the
complexities.
Very easy to use from scripting
languages and office productivity tools
Format of Waveform results
Binary or ASCII. Both require parsing
before use.
Waveforms are presented as arrays of
floating point values.
Control from MS Office suite
Possible via ActiveDSO* utility Yes, natively (see examples later in
this manual)
* ActiveDSO is a Active-X based driver for LeCroy oscilloscopes
General Characteristics
• When an application is running locally on the instrument and requests a connection to the DSO via
Automation (for example, by using CreateObject(“LeCroy.XStreamDSO”) from Visual Basic), one of two
things will happen. If the X-Stream DSO application is already running, the object returned will be a
“pointer” to the running application. If the DSO application is not running, it will be started. It is not
possible to run two simultaneous instances of the X-Stream DSO application.
• More than one simultaneous connection to the instrument via Automation will be accepted, but
simultaneous connections are not recommended.
• When the final client has been disconnected from the instrument (server), the X-Stream DSO application
will remain running and will accept further client connections.
• Operations that cause Modal Dialogs to appear in the instrument’s display will, by default, disrupt access
from Automation. This behavior can be changed using the app.SystemControl.ModalDialogTimeout
and app.SystemControl.EnableMessageBox controls. Refer to the description of each of these controls
in the reference section for more information.
• The instrument application can be minimized in order to allow the controlling application to take over the
display and touch panel by means of the app.Minimize control. It can also be resized and repositioned
on the display by means of the app.Top, app.Left, app.Bottom, app.Right controls.
916435 RevA 1-3