One of our fellow forum members maintains the following which might be of use: https://github.com/lxi
Well this is mostly just a library to let you communicate with SCPI devices in C. I use windows for everything so for that i just install Keysight IO software and use the standard NI VISA dll, even works straight out of Excel using VBA.
What i would actually want is a complete solution that also does something useful with the data. For example you just run it, add a device like "Generic Keithley 2xxxx DMM" tell it its on GPIB 21, perhaps a few extra parameters and done. Now you suddenly have a box with the current reading of the DMM showing on it. Drag it on to a chart window and it starts trend piloting the value. Drag another one on there and it trend plots that too on the same graph. Click a button to add a math function to multiply them and give you a trend plot of power in Watts. Click of a button exports a CSV of that graph.
Go into another menu to add a test sequence. You click to add input parameters like "Parameter 'StartVoltage' is min 0V max 30V" This then appears in the test sequence box as a numeric entry box and the bottom of the box having a start stop button. That button executes a short script like this:
step(V, StartVoltage, EndVoltage, StepVoltage)
{
PSU1.SetVolts(V)
Delay(100)
PlotXY(V, DMM1.Value)
}
Once you click the button the graph starts filling up with points that draw the I/V characteristic of whatever load your multimeter is meshuring the current into.
Add to the script the reading of the other two multimeters and you can now plot the % efficency of a power supply.
This is the sort of software i want to have. Doesn't need to be fancy and powerful. It just has to be able to get the simple data loging and automation tasks with as little time as possible. That way i would make use of test automation since it would take me less time to set up the automated test than actually doing it manually. This makes it worth to automate these one off tests, programing your own automation tool built for the specific task is otherwise only worth it for tests you know you will repeat a lot.
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