Interaction between Keithley 6485 pico-ammeter and the PC through LabView

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Interaction between Keithley 6485 pico-ammeter
and the PC through LabView

• By
• Shahab Khan

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Development Process

• Learned some LabView and SCPI language
• Wrote Program with help of examples
• Had a lot of problems getting the program to read
  non-zero values from the 6485
• With much help from the Keithley and National
  Instruments Technicians, finally got it to work

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Experimental setup to test 6485

• Function Generator, settings frequency.5mhz
  max voltage 5V
• 8.6 Mega Ohm Resistor
• Made simple circuit with 6485 probe
• Should observe alternating current in the micro
  Ampere range

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Controls

• Toggle Auto Range
• Set Manual Range (faster if manually set range)
• Set wait time between subsequent measurements
• Set a background current value to subtract from
  all the readings

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Readings

• Chart to observe the measurements
• Numerical indicator to read last measurement
• Number of Readings Indicator
• Data Analysis after data acquisition
• Mean, standard deviation, variance, etc
• Option to save current readings into a
  spreadsheet

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Future

• Need to fine tune program to our specific
  experimental setup
• Help Setup PMT, tower of cells, and rest of
  setup then start taking data
• Possibly acquire Read-back mechanism of xyz
  position, then configure that with LabView