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GPIB Troubleshooting Resources

NI Spy

Launching It

There are several ways to launch NI Spy:

  1. In the Measurement & Automation Explorer, select Tools >> NI Spy.

  2. Right-click on a GPIB board listed in the Measurement & Automation Explorer and select "NI Spy" from the pop-up menu:

    MAX Pop-up 1


  3. Right-click on a GPIB board listed in the Measurement & Automation Explorer and select "Scan for Instruments" from the pop-up menu:

    MAX Pop-up 1


    Then right-click on a found instrument and select "NI Spy" from the pop-up menu:

    MAX Pop-up 2


  4. Click on a GPIB board listed in the Measurement & Automation Explorer to select it and then press the NI Spy button GPIB Analyzer Button that appears in the tool bar.


What It Does

NI Spy opens in its own window and looks like this:

NI Spy Main

NI Spy is similar to the GPIB Analyzer in that it lets you spy on the activity on your General Purpose Interface Bus and "capture" it for review. However, whereas the GPIB Analyzer requires that your board be equipped with the corresponding analyzer hardware, NI Spy accomplishes essentially the same thing in software, but in a much more limited capacity. If you ever have any difficulty with communications on your GPIB, then NI Spy is an extremely useful tool, which you can use to troubleshoot the problem.

The key aspects of NI Spy are:

  • The Spy menu:

    Spy Menu


    This is where you can access the Options sub-menu and where you can make sure that you are set to spy on GPIB commands (there should be a check mark next to NI-488.2, as shown above).

  • The Options menu (accessed through the Spy menu):

    Options Menu


    The "Call History Depth" sets the number of lines of code to capture. The "Data Buffer Mode" should probably be set to "Full Buffer", so that entire data messages (rather than abbreviated versions of them) are captured. Selecting the "Log to File" option under "File Logging" lets you save captures to file. The default file name is "C:\Program Files\National Instruments\NI Spy\Capture.spy", but you can change the name and location with the Browse button.

  • The Start Capture button: Capture Button

  • The Stop Capture button: Capture Button


Measurement & Automation Explorer




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