GPIB / HPGL Plotter Emulator

Michael G. Katzmann (NV3Z/VK2BEA/G4NYV)

This is a program to emulate an HPGL plotter for older HP Spectrum and Network Analyzers:

Once captured, the plot may be printed or saved as PDF, SVG or PNG files.

To install on the Linux Fedora distribution:

    $ sudo dnf -y copr enable vk2bea/GPIB 
    $ sudo dnf -y copr enable vk2bea/HPGLplotter 
    $ sudo dnf -y install HPGLplotter linux-gpib-firmware 

To build & install using Linux autotools, install the following required packages & tools:

• automake, autoconf and libtool
• To build on Raspberri Pi / Debian: libglib2.0-dev libgtk-4-dev
• To run on Raspberry Pi / Debian : libglib-2, libgtk-4, libgpib, fonts-noto-color-emoji

To compile and to run this program the Linux GPIB driver must be installed. RPMs are available from the Copr repositories for Fedora Linux.

The National Instruments GPIB driver may also be used, but this has not been tested. The Linux GPIB API is compatable with the NI library.... quote: "The API of the C library is intended to be compatible with National Instrument's GPIB library."

Once the prerequisites (as listed above) are installed, install the 'HPGL Plotter' with these commands:

    $ ./autogen.sh
    $ cd build/
    $ ../configure
    $ make all
    $ sudo make install

To run:

    $ /usr/local/bin/HPGLplotter

To uninstall:

    $ sudo make uninstall

Troubleshooting:

If problems are encountered, first confirm that correct GPIB communication is occuring.

Note that the GPIB interface on the Linux computer must be able to act as a simple listener / talker. Some devices (notably the Agilent 82357A/B) can only act as system controllers and will not work with this application. (the National Instruments GPIB-USB-HS does work as it does not have this restriction)

The program requires the gtk4 library, on the Linux system, to be version 4.10 or later. To check, use: $ gtk4-launch --version

The program has been tested with the HP8753C Network Analyzer, HP8595E Spectrum Analyzer, HP8568B Spectrum Analyzer and the HP54100 oscilloscope. (If you use it with other instruments, please report your experience)

Use the ibtest and ibterm tools distributed with the linux-gpib distribution.

The HPGL Plotter logs some information to the journal, the verbosity of which can be set with the --debug command line switch.

To enable debugging output to the journal, start the program with the --debug 7 switch, (Debug levels 0-7).

If started without the switch, the default logging verbosity is 3.

To view the output (in follow mode) use:

    journalctl -t HPGLplotter -f