I cut my teeth on IEE-488. I didn’t realize that it was still a thing.
Linux mainline kernel just had support for GPIB added. https://hackaday.com/2025/12/16/after-decades-linux-finally-...
Open source USB to GPIB converter (for Test and Measurement instruments)
21–30 of 48 posts
Re: Open source USB to GPIB converter (for Test and Measurement instruments)
#22I cut my teeth on IEE-488. I didn’t realize that it was still a thing.
There’s a fairly large second-hand market for old electronics test equipment. A lot of that stuff only had GPIB ports, even well into the 90s. Cheap Chinese entrants (Rigol, Siglent, etc.) only within the last decade started making an impact
Re: Open source USB to GPIB converter (for Test and Measurement instruments)
#23Great work making this available for sale. NI and Keysight are the only two traditional vendors of this kind of thing and they’re priced close to $1k these days. There are tons of knock-offs on Ebay that won’t last more than a few months if they ever work.
Re: Open source USB to GPIB converter (for Test and Measurement instruments)
#24Ooooo, and it supports secondary addressing? NONE of the low-cost interfaces support secondary addressing! (At least last time I looked around!)
That's a big deal for those of us with R&S CMU200's / CRTU's, which require secondary addressing to make it act like a spec-an with tracking generator. And I see that in your list of tested equipment!
Fantastic. And the price of prebuilt units is super reasonable. I'm in.
Re: Open source USB to GPIB converter (for Test and Measurement instruments)
#25Maybe someonw can explain me, but I never understood the appeal of GPIB for modern instruments (legacy instruments are of course "excused"). Electrically is a terrible interface that introduces ground loops with the control computer. Speed are laughable and it requires exensive and exotic adapters with complex sw stack (I wish this projects good success, it's needed!). Ethernet in comparison tick all my boxes. It's e…
If you buy used equipment which doesn't have Ethernet or your company wants you to ise the stuff that is in the Lab since 10+ years there's simply no other choice. Or companies that see Ethernet as a potential security attack vector. It's indeed not that GPIB is better than Ethernet. In tiny aspects that's argueable, but as general statement true.
> Or companies that see Ethernet as a potential security attack vector.
It's sad how true this is. VXI gets corporate IT all prickly. An airgapped lab network would be safer but somehow they hate that idea even more.
GPIB isn't even on their radar. Test to your heart's content. It's not a "network".
Re: Open source USB to GPIB converter (for Test and Measurement instruments)
#26Maybe someonw can explain me, but I never understood the appeal of GPIB for modern instruments (legacy instruments are of course "excused"). Electrically is a terrible interface that introduces ground loops with the control computer. Speed are laughable and it requires exensive and exotic adapters with complex sw stack (I wish this projects good success, it's needed!). Ethernet in comparison tick all my boxes. It's e…
> What am I missing? Not much, but consider latency: You can use the Group Execute Trigger (GET) to simultaneously trigger multiple instruments with both very low latency and very low latency dispersion. Think, easy-to-use sub-microsecond synchronization. Ethernet and USB 4 may have orders of magnitude more bandwidth, but can’t achieve the same multi-device synchronization capability without side channel signals. Now…
sub-microsecond triggering should be doable with a level-2 cut-through switch and an ethernet broadcast no? I admit that ethernet is not really designed for that as the Phy is then the latency bottleneck.
Re: Open source USB to GPIB converter (for Test and Measurement instruments)
#27I cut my teeth on IEE-488. I didn’t realize that it was still a thing.
I finished my Master's a couple years ago, and in our IC probing lab, it was almost all GPIB. All of the pieces of test equipment, except for a single cutting-edge Keysight scope (which used Ethernet instead), were connected together via those chunky but satisfying and robust cables, usually controlled via MATLAB or some other IC measurement software package.
Re: Open source USB to GPIB converter (for Test and Measurement instruments)
#28Great work making this available for sale. NI and Keysight are the only two traditional vendors of this kind of thing and they’re priced close to $1k these days. There are tons of knock-offs on Ebay that won’t last more than a few months if they ever work.
used NI-GPIB on USB cost $100 on ebay. You don’t need $1000.
Re: Open source USB to GPIB converter (for Test and Measurement instruments)
#29Great work making this available for sale. NI and Keysight are the only two traditional vendors of this kind of thing and they’re priced close to $1k these days. There are tons of knock-offs on Ebay that won’t last more than a few months if they ever work.
used NI-GPIB on USB cost $100 on ebay. You don’t need $1000.
See knock-offs comment.
Re: Open source USB to GPIB converter (for Test and Measurement instruments)
#30I wish AVR DU series had any sort of open source support, we could finally move on from 32U4. https://www.microchip.com/en-us/products/microcontrollers/8-...
the pic16/18 offerings with usb peripherals is much better tbh