Fluke PM-3394B, PM-3380B, PM-3390B, PM-3370B, PM-3384B user manual Using the Combiscope Instruments

USING THE COMBISCOPE INSTRUMENTS 3 - 19

or by setting INITiate:CONTinuous to ON. The INITiate[:IMMediate] command causes the CombiScope instrument to perform one complete acquisition cycle. Upon completion of the cycle the instrument returns to the IDLE state.

The INItiate:CONTinuous command is used to select whether the instrument is continuously initiated or not. When INItiate:CONTinuous is set to ON, the instrument immediately exits IDLE and starts an acquisition cycle. On completion of each cycle, the instrument does not return to the IDLE state, but immediately starts another acquisition cycle.

Before the acquisition takes place, the trigger conditions must be satisfied. These conditions are programmable to suit the needs of your application, as described in the next section. After a *RST command, there are no trigger conditions to be met. So, an INITiate command causes the CombiScope instrument to immediately trigger the acquisition.

Executing the measurement instructions MEASure? and READ? causes the acquisition to become initiated automatically. No separate INITiate commands are needed. When the FETCh? instruction is used, the instrument must have been initiated either by a preceding INITiate[:IMMediate] command, or implicitly by a READ? or MEASure? instruction.

When the CombiScope instrument receives the ABORt command, any acquisition that is in progress is aborted immediately, and the instrument returns to the IDLE state. The same occurs when *RST is received. The ABORt command distinguishes from *RST in that *RST also resets the instrument settings, whereas, ABORt does not. For example, when INITiate:CONTinuous is set to ON, a *RST command not only aborts the pending acquisition and forces the instrument to the IDLE state, but it also sets INITiate:CONTinuous to OFF, preventing the acquisition to initiate again. Since ABORt does not affect the instrument settings, an aborted acquisition cycle is immediately initiated again.

When the instrument is in the IDLE state, the "no-pending operation" flag that is associated with the acquisition is set True. The *OPC and *OPC? commands use this flag to signal their "Operation Completed" response. Notice that if INITiate:CONTinuous is set to ON, the instrument does not return to the IDLE state when an acquisition cycle has completed. This means that no "Operation Completed" response is generated after the *OPC and *OPC? commands.