User manual

WaveAce Remote Control

920836 Rev A

The oscilloscope follows stricter rules for response messages than for program messages:

 Program messages may be in upper- or lower-case characters, but response messages

will always be upper-case.

 Program messages may contain extraneous spaces or tabs, but response messages will

not.

 Program messages can contain a mix of short and long form command/query headers,

but response messages will always contain the short form unless you use the

COMM_HEADER command to specify the long form or no header at all.

Using Status Registers

Status registers allow you to quickly determine the instrument's internal processing status at

any time. These registers and the oscilloscope's status reporting system, which group related

functions together, are designed to comply with IEEE 488.2 recommendations.

Registers such as the Standard Event Status Register (ESR) are required by the IEEE 488.2

Standard. Others are device specific. Commands associated with IEEE 488.2 mandatory status

registers are preceded with an asterisk * in the Command Reference section.

 Enable registers such as the Standard Event Status Enable Register (ESE) are used to generate a

bit-wise AND with their associated status registers.

 The ESR primarily summarizes errors, whereas INR summarizes the instrument’s internal working

state. Additional details of errors reported by ESR can be obtained with the queries CMR?, DDR?,

and EXR?.

Using Status Registers Example

If you were to send the erroneous command TRIG_MAKE SINGLE to your instrument, the

oscilloscope would reject it and set the Command Error Register (CMR) to the value 1

(unrecognized command/query header). The non-zero value of CMR would be reported to Bit 5

of the Standard Event Status Register (ESR), which is then set.

You can read the value of CMR and simultaneously reset to zero at any time using the CMR?

command. The occurrence of a command error can also be detected by analyzing the response

to *ESR?.

Standard Event Status Register (ESR)

ESR is a 16-bit register reflecting the occurrence of events. ESR bit assignments have been

standardized by IEEE 488.2. Only the lower eight bits are currently in use.

Read ESR using the *ESR? query. The response is the binary weighted sum of the register bits.

The register is cleared with *ESR? or ALST?, with *CLS, or when power is applied to the scope.

For example, the response message *ESR 160 indicates that a command error occurred and the

ESR is being read for the first time after power-on. The value 160 can be broken down into 128