Debugging Your Code

The commands and functions described in this section allow you to:

• Log information about commands that are sent to a device to the console.
• Try out SCPI commands before they are sent to a device.

The VISADebug Global Property

Values: On or Off

Default: Off

**Behavior:**Logs information about commands that you are sending to a device to the console. Switch on this property for debugging purposes, and to understand the way that commands are interpreted.

Example:

set the VISADebug to On // Logs device commands to a console.

MakeSCPICommand, MakeSCPIQuery Functions

Behavior: Generates a SCPI command string without sending it to the device. This is useful for testing how different combinations of user-friendly command strings and parameters are sent for the setValue or query functions, respectively. These functions use the current device settings, from the VisaDevice properties:

• DefaultChannel
• DefaultIdentifier
• AllowOverlappedCommand.

Parameters: Supported SCPI parameters.

Syntax:
makeSCPICommand( commandText {,value} )
makeSCPIQuery( queryText {,value} )

Returns: Binary data for the specific SCPI command.

Example:

put powerAnalyzer.makeSCPICommand("voltage on channel 2", 500 millivolts)
—> VOLTAGE 0.5, (@2);*OPC?

put powerAnalyzer.makeSCPIQuery("measure voltage for M1.DataOut1 allow overlap")
—> MEASURE:VOLTAGE? 'M1.DataOut1'

note

If you store or log the raw SCPI command string that is generated by these functions, you can also send it to the device using the ExecuteSCPI command.