1656 & 1657 Battery Element Tester Owner’s Manual
STS Instruments Page 49 of 88
8 Remote Programming
This section describes remote control functions of the battery element test over the serial or
USB Remote Interface. To select the proper commands for accurate setup and control of the
unit, a thorough understanding of the tester’s capabilities and operation is required. It is
strongly recommended that the user read to become familiar with the STS 1656 & 1657 battery
element testers.
8.1 Introduction to SCPI
SCPI stands for “Standard Commands for Programmable Instruments”. This industry standard
has been widely adopted by manufactures of test equipment since its inception in 1999. The
objective of the standard is to create a uniform and easily human-readable command syntax
between test instruments and computers that is transferable between instrument types and
brands.
The SCPI Standard is built on the foundation of IEEE-488.2, Standard Codes and Formats. It
requires conformance to IEEE-488.2, but is pure software standard. SCPI syntax is ASCII text, and
therefore can be attached to any computer test language, such as BASIC, C, or C++. It can also be
used with Test Application Environments such as LabWindows/CVI, LabVIEW, MATLAB,
Microsoft Visual Studio, or Agilent VEE. SCPI is hardware-independent. SCPI strings can be sent
over any instrument interface. It works equally well over RS-232 or LAN networks.
The standard was originally created by an industry standards group (SCPI Consortium) and has
since been transferred for management to the IVI foundation (www.ivifoundation.org
). A copy
of the SPCI standard is available from the IVI Foundation but not required to use this manual.
For more details about these underlying IEEE standards, refer to the ANSI/IEEE-488.1 2003 and
ANSI/IEEE-488.2 1992 standards. These standards can be purchased at www.ieee.com
but are
not required to use this manual.
Note that the battery element tester does not offer and GPIB interface but as noted, the SCPI
syntax is independent from the physical transport layer.
8.2 SCPI Command Syntax
The following notations are used in this manual to define the SCPI command syntax used:
1. COMMANDS are shown in the left hand column in BOLD, beginning with an asterisk ( * )
or colon ( : ) text with NO underline.
2. Command DESCRIPTIONS appear in the right hand column.
3. Some SCPI keywords are optional, and are ignored by the device. Optional keywords
are enclosed in square brackets [ ].
4. Lowercase letters of commands shown are also optional.
5. The SCPI standard requires uppercase text in all SCPI commands (start with : ), however,
the battery element tester is not case sensitive and will accept commands sent in lower
case. It is recommended that programming formats follow the SCPI standard.
6. All SCPI commands have query command counterparts unless noted. A query command
consists of the command immediately appended with a question mark ( ? ). Values
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