Doing a little project as a GPIB / VXI PSU Front End. I have a really nice Fluke PM2813 psu, triple outputs but on the back and a tiny 16 characer 1 line LCD screen. Not really meany to be used as a bench psu as such, but these things are awesome and cheap on ebay.
So, I have started a little project to make a fancy GUI thats useable that acts as a front end, either over GPIB via USB or GPIB via Ethernet.
The plan is to use a raspberry pi in a project box (easy to get full screen graphics out of the thing, and its cheap) with an LCD, I got a nice 7" lcd coming from ebay that does 1024x600. Right now I have it talking over VXI (using ICS gpib to ethernet box) to the PSU and its working nicely and expose the banana connectors + sense to the project box.
The software is written that it takes a driver, which basically maps SetVoltage(number) to a gpib command, so PSU that takes SCPI commands can get a driver written up probably fairly easy. The current PM2800 series driver will report number of channels, max voltage per channel and max power per channel, and it knows the PM281x are power curved and PM283x are fixed. Should work with all PM2800 series psu from 1/2/3 channels automatically.
I need to work up a keypad for the thing and stick it all in a project box. I've a bit more of a writeup over on one of my blog,
http://kråketær.comI've attached what it looks like currently (its not fancy fancy, its just workable right now). It can record data, so I can plot voltage/power etc in fancy graphs.
Right now its showing (top 3 lines) actualy voltage/current/power, the next two lines are the set voltage/current and the last line is the overvoltage limit, under that you have some basic info (CC or CV, OCP/OVP, channel on or off, etc)