HP 4194 Control Software

The software package is pc-based, developed primarily on the .NET platform. It communicates with the HP 4194 over the IEEE 488 protocol. A PCI card with the IEEE 488 connector is required.

All of the functionality of the 4194 is brought to the PC. In addition to the 4194’s function list, any data that can be displayed on the 4194 can be exported to common file formats such as .csv and .xls(x) for further analysis. In addition to ease of communciation, screen captures and plot annotations are made convenient and easy. Users can pause the live updating mode and analyze/arrange a plot for quick capture and inclusion in a proposal or report. Autoscaling and frequency range adjustment are made quick and easy. Multiple frequency ranges of interest can be saved and simply reloaded. The user interface can put the 4194 in local mode so that user can choose to work with the analyzer’s hard buttons or return to pc control.

For those legacy impedance analyzer users, who are not ready to invest in an expensive piece of new equipment, this software package is a cost-effective alternative. The images below show some screenshots of the software with some typical data from 4194.

Figure 1: HP 4194A user interface

The following picture shows the software control panel. If there are features or calculations not included in the current software package that you would like to see included, we’d probably like to see it too, so contact us.

Figure 2: HP 4194A control panel