Understanding The Interactive IO Display

This help topic introduces you to:

The InteractiveIO Display (Windows)

Menus

There are three available menus.

Connect

  • Connect: Enter an instrument's path and choose the OK button. See Connecting to an Instrument for more information.
  • Disconnect drops the connection to the current resource. 
  • Exit closes Interactive IO. 

Interact

The Interact menu has all the same commands as IO Monitor's toolbar buttons (described below).

Help

On the Help menu:

  • Help Topics opens this help file.
  • About provides version information for this product.

Toolbar buttons

The toolbar buttons near the top of the screen provide shortcuts for commands on the Interact menu.

Button Shortcut for Description
Stop Interact > Stop IO Operation Terminates all pending operations between Interactive IO and the device. When no commands are in progress to stop, the button (or its corresponding menu item) is inactive (grayed out).
Device Clear Interact > Device Clear Sends a Clear command to the device.
Read STB Interact > Read Status Byte Sends a request to the device for the status byte. The status byte is used in GPIB devices to provide descriptive detail about the physical status of the device.
SYST:ERR? Interact > SYST:ERR? Query Clears the instrument to see if an error has occurred. Responses are an integer, are device dependent, and are usually zero (no error).
Clear History Interact > Clear Instrument Session History Clears the Instrument Session History display

Settings

 Interact > Settings...

Opens a dialog box that lets you set:

General settings:

  • the Timeout value (in msecs, ex: 30000 is 30 seconds)
  • the standard (end-of-line) EOL sequence (ex: /n).

Command

The Command query field allows you to enter commands. Click here for more information on Interactive IO Commands and Shortcuts

Send Command / Read Response / Send & Read buttons

The Send Command button writes what you have entered in the Command text box to the I/O buffer.

The Read Response button reads the response the device places in the I/O buffer.

The Send & Read button writes to the I/O buffer and then reads the response from the I/O buffer.

Instrument Session History

The Instrument Session History pane shows a listing of recent activity (including errors if any occur).

Progress and Status bars

  • The progress bar near the bottom of the window (just above the status bar) appears only when a command is running, and indicates the length of time that command has been running.
  • The status bar at the bottom of the screen gives details of the current connection when one is established.