The Fastest and Easiest Connection
Gain the ultimate speed and efficiency by connecting your PC or laptop to your test and measurement instruments. The Agilent 82357B USB/GPIB interface provides instant connections, enabling a direct connection from the USB port on your PC to GPIB instruments.
USB (Universal Serial Bus) is built into most of today's desktop and laptop computers, offering fast and easy plug-and-play connection and auto configuration. Furthermore, the 82357B USB/GPIB interface makes connectivity simpler as there are no switches to set, and no PC cards to install.
Getting connected has never been easier with the 82357B USB/GPIB interface, its thanks to automatic configuration and use of industry standards. Your applications will be up and running in an instant.
Totally Transparent, Fully Compatible
The USB/GPIB Interface software allows transparent communication between a PC and one or more GPIB instruments. The included VISA (Virtual Instrument Software Architecture) software provides GPIB emulation so that your existing GPIB programs work immediately, without modification. You also do not need to learn a new programming paradigm.
USB support is standard in Windows 2000/XP. These operating systems support the automatic plug-and-play configurations, thus it is easy to install, configure, and use the USB devices. Standard plug-and-play devices, like the 82357B will be automatically detected as soon as they are connected to the computer's USB port. With the 82357B USB/GPIB interface and its convenient plug-and-play feature, you just plug and go. It is also hot pluggable, making it easy to connect and disconnect without having to shut down the computer. No external power supplies are necessary.
The 82357B USB/GPIB interface uses a thin, flexible, high quality USB cable that is USB 1.1 and 2.0 compliant. This cable is shielded and specified to 1,500 insertions, ensuring a durable connection and reliable data transfer. The 82357B is capable of transfer rates over 1.15 MB/s with large block transfers. The performance is better than typical GPIB cards for block sizes over 32KB. Small block transfers are limited by the USB implementation and the overhead associated with setting up the transfer. However, since instrument setup time can dominate the overall test time, this impact may be minimal. If small block transfer performance is critical, then you may consider the Agilent 82350B PCI GPIB interface.
Make the Connection
You may connect directly to one instrument with no additional GPIB cables required with the 82357B USB/GPIB interface. For multiple instruments connection, use a daisy chain or star configuration with your GPIB instruments using standard GPIB cables. Once the instruments are connected, connect the USB/GPIB interface as the last connection on one of the instruments. One 82357B USB/GPIB interface supports up to 14 GPIB instruments. Multiple 82357B USB/GPIB interfaces can be connected to improve system performance. Another additional significant feature is the parallel polling capability of the 82357B USB/GPIB interface. This allows you to easily check up to eight individual devices at once, corresponding to the number of data lines on the GPIB.
Software Included
The VISA standard is a system level industry standard supported by a multi-vendor foundation for instrument software. It offers an easy-to-use set of IO control functions and provides a migration path to new standards such as IVI (Interchangeable Virtual Instruments). IVI is a new driver standard developed by instrument and software vendors to define software standards for instrument interchangeability. This new standard is layered on Agilent VISA and offers interchangeability and high performance. The VISA Assistant software is also included and it provides communication and diagnostic tools to help troubleshoot your applications.