Agilent Technologies, Inc.

Nathan A Berg

Timothy Nephi Tillotson

Sara Ting

Gregory A Hill

Charles Platz

Leslie P Hammer

A method and system for creating a protocol dependent control path for instrument applications. In a representative embodiment, identifications of a client, of an instrument application, of a client specific protocol, and of an application specific protocol are obtained. The client is configured to invoke the application and to communicate using the client specific protocol. The application is configured to communicate using the application specific protocol. Then a control path between the client and the application is automatically created. In another representative embodiment, a system for creating the protocol dependent control path for instrument applications includes a management logic module configured to obtain identification of the client, to obtain identification of the instrument application, to obtain identification of the client specific protocol, to obtain identification of the application specific protocol, and to automatically create the control path between the client and the application.

Automatic creation of protocol dependent control path for instrument application

Alteration of a Standard Commands for Programmable Instrumentation (SCPI) command set for instrument control. In representative embodiments, each command of the command set includes a different combination of SCPI grammatical elements; the SCPI grammatical elements are organized hierarchically in a tree data structure; and the tree has nodes with each node comprising one of the SCPI grammatical elements. A node to alter is selected, and an alteration to the selected node is specified. Access to the selected node, as well as to any descendant nodes of the selected node is restricted; the selected node is altered in accordance with the specified alteration, wherein the alteration of the selected node is performed at runtime; and the access restriction to the selected node and to any descendant nodes of the selected node is removed, wherein the access restriction, node alteration, and access removal are performed while the instrument is operational.

Dynamic runtime modification of SCPI grammar

In an instrumentation system, the functionality of an I/O interface which controls an instrument is extended with an I/O interface extension library. The extension library operates to receive a function call and determines whether the function call is supported by the underlying I/O interface. If the function call is supported by the underlying I/O interface, the function call is passed on to the I/O interface for processing. If the function call is not supported by the underlying I/O interface, the function call is decoded into a sequence of standard I/O primitives that are supported by the underlying I/O interface, which are then sent on to the I/O interface for processing. In one embodiment, reduced overall latency time is achieved by packaging multiple sequential functions into a package and sending the package over an I/O bus to the instrument I/O controller as a single unit rather than sending each sequential function using separate bus instructions.

Growing community of inventors

Fort Collins, CO, United States of America

Nathan A Berg