Python example to do automated load tests for power supplies with HP 6632B

[Richard Klingler]

As an exercise I wrote a little script that controls one of my many HP 6632B power supplies...

The power supply can not only source power, but also sink current programmable via GPIB...

which makes it perfect to do automated load testing for power supplies as the voltage

can be read out during the automation...

This script steps through several current sink settings and plots the result as a PNG file:

Feel free to use...if you modify/enhance, please feed back :-)

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

import time

from Gpib import *

fig = plt.figure()

x = []

y = []

inst = Gpib(0,5)

inst.write("VOLT 0")

inst.write("CURR 0.01")

time.sleep(0.5)

inst.write("OUTPUT ON")

time.sleep(0.5)

for i in range (0, 30):

sink = (i + 1) * 0.1

inst.write("CURR " + str(sink))

time.sleep(1)

inst.write("MEAS:VOLT?")

voltage = inst.read(200)

x.append(sink)

y.append(voltage)

plt.scatter(sink, voltage)

plt.draw()

print voltage, sink

inst.write("OUTPUT OFF")

inst.write("CURR 0")

plt.ylabel('Voltage (V)')

plt.xlabel('Current (A)')

plt.ylim(0,6)

plt.xlim(0,3)

plt.grid()

plt.show()

fig.savefig('power5v3a-sense.png')

 

[Richard Klingler]

Here's the PNG output:

[Cheh]

Hi Richard,

thanks for sharing this with us. It's great to see a real example on Python. Very interesting for me.