Therefore, a project was undertaken to implement the solution for these labs using a Keithley 236 Source-Measurement Unit, a Fluke 8840A Digital Multimeter, and a Philips 5192 Function Generator. The multimeter samples the base current for a BJT experiment. A PC controls all devices by means of a GPIB interface, which is an IEEE standard. The software controls from the PC are written in the Labview environment. With this technique, students spend less than one hour of the class period on measurements, allowing them the remaining two hours to focus on the main points of the experiment and do the analysis.
Efficiency is improved dramatically.
Then, the sub VIs came together to function as a whole. More troubleshooting was done. One of the interesting problems was the noise coming from the wires. This noise caused a terrible distortion in the output waveforms. The Keithley has a mode that rejects this noise, and thus the noise problem was solved.