Hi. My name is Matt, and I’m a support engineer at Agilent Technologies, and today we’re going
to talk about how to synchronize Output On Sequencing across multiple DC power analyzer mainframes.
So, basically, you have more than one DC power analyzer mainframe. When you have Output On
it’s going to turn the outlets on multiple mainframes when you hit Output On on one channel
on one of the frames. So you can also control the timing of when the output comes up across
multiple frames based on when you turn the one output on.
If you look at the screen right now, on the left there’s two DC power analyzers that
we’re going to use to show the sequencing feature, and on the right we have an Agilent
oscilloscope that we will use to measure the output waveforms. So I’m going to turn all
three of these pieces of equipment on and we’re going to get started.
So what you see here is the rear of one of the units, and the thing you have to do is use
the eight-pin digital connector here, and what you want to do is connect the wire to
pin four and a wire to pin eight, and then take those wires and run them to pin four
and pin eight of the second mainframe connector. So what pin four is going to be is our on-couple pin,
and pin eight is the digital ground on these units. So you need to set this up
before you can use the output on/off sequencing across multiple frames.
Next we’re going to actually set up stuff on the front panel of the units.
So I’m going to show you how to set up one of the mainframes. The other ones you’re
going to do the same exact thing so no use spending time looking through that.
So the first thing we’re going to do is tell the unit to pay attention to the digital
connector in the back. So what we’re going to do is press Menu, go to Utilities, Digital I/O,
and choose pin four, which is the pin we have the red wire on, and we’re going
to set up the function to be On Couple, and the polarity will be negative on both.
So that’s all you have to pay attention to that green connector in the back. So we’ll
go back to that in the meter view here. And so the first thing we’re going to do is
set up channel one. So we’re going to hit Settings, and we’re going to set this to
ten volts, hit Enter. Set it to one amp just get the current limit out of the way, hit Enter.
Now we’re going to go to channel two. Set this for 20 volts and Enter, and
set it for one amp again just to get the current out of the way.
So the next thing we’re going to do is go to the Delay entry here. So we’re going
to go to Delay, hit Enter, and let’s go to Output Coupling here. So the thing to note
is this statement right here that the max delay offset for this frame is 31 milliseconds.
Now what that means is that every one of the different members of the modular power supply
family has an inherent time it takes from the time it gets an output on command to the time
that it starts turning the output on. So for this one the maximum is 31 milliseconds and
it will be different on the other one. I believe the other frame is 32 milliseconds.
So what you want to do is use this Delay Offset entry here to kind of program that out of
the way so that it meets the delay numbers you put in. So for this one I have it set
to 58 milliseconds. So that’s greater than 31 and the 32 milliseconds we have to deal with,
and both channels in this frame are coupled to turn on the unit. So we’re
going to go and close this.
And what we’re going to do now is channel one is going to be our initial channel so
we leave that one at zero. Channel two we’re going to do at 20 milliseconds, .02, Enter,
and then the two on the top we’re going to put at 40 milliseconds and 60 milliseconds
so that we have a nice spread that we can see easily on our scope. So back to meter
view here. So this frame is all set up so we hit Output On. We’ll be ready to go.
I’m going to set up the second frame, and then we’ll go for turning them all on.
So I’m not going to show the second frame setup. So when you see the next segment the
second mainframe will be all ready to go.
So now both frames are set up, and I’m going to turn channel one on the bottom frame on,
and you can see that when I turn that on, all four channels turn on and a screen turns up
on the oscilloscope. I’m going to take a screenshot of the scope and put it in the
video so you can get a closer look, but you can see that once I hit the On button on the
bottom frame, all four channels turned on across both frames and all the outputs turned on.
So we’ll take a closer look at the scope shot now.
So here’s a closer look at the screen from the oscilloscope. You can see that our time
base is ten milliseconds per division, and the top lists what our vertical scale is.
So the yellow trace, which is our first channel, is the first one to turn on, and then 20 milliseconds
later the green trace, which is our second channel on the bottom frame turns on, and
then the purple and pink traces are the two channels on the top mainframe so you can see
that the third channel turns on 20 milliseconds later, and then 20 milliseconds later that
the final channel turns on. So you can see we have a zero, 20 milliseconds,
40 milliseconds, and 60 milliseconds, and that our settings are correct and
we got the results that we expected.
So that’s how you synchronize Output On Sequencing across multiple DC power analyzer
mainframes. If you have any questions or comments about this video or any questions at all about
our products, please feel free to contact us via the Forum link included in the
beginning on the title card.
Thanks for watching. This has been Matt. Take care.