Qcodes example with Basel SP983c Preamp and its Remote SP983a¶

This notebook explains how the Basel SP983c Preamp works and shows the main features of its and its remote's QCoDeS driver.

Basel SP983c Preamp¶

This preamp is a low-noise high-stability (LNHS) I to V converter which offers unique features such as a floating input and the possibility to apply an external offset voltage. It offers five decades of gain, from 10^5 up to 10^9 V/A, and an integrated low-pass filter with a cut-off from 30 Hz to 1 MHz.

Features of Qcodes Basel SP983c Preamp driver¶

The driver has three parameters - gain, fcut and offset_voltage. 'gain' and 'fcut' parameters are mirroring the gain and cut-off frequency setup on the instrument and can be set to the values available on the physical instrument. It is users responsibility to set these parameters on the driver to the values matching to the values set on the physical instrument.

Let's try it ...

Make the necessary imports ...

In [1]:

from qcodes.instrument_drivers.basel import BaselSP983c
from qcodes.instrument_drivers.Keysight import Keysight34465A

In [10]:

preamp = BaselSP983c("basel_preamp")

gain can be set as:

In [11]:

preamp.gain(1e07)

and recalled as:

In [12]:

preamp.gain()

Out[12]:

10000000.0

cut-off frequency can be set as:

In [13]:

preamp.fcut(300)

and recalled as:

In [14]:

preamp.fcut()

Out[14]:

In [15]:

preamp.close()

How to setup an input offset voltage source for the Basel SP983c Preamp?¶

'offset_voltage' parameter can be set with a source input offset voltage parameter. The range of input offset voltage is -10 to 10 Volts. This input offset voltage is used for offsetting the voltage by the preamp in range -0.1 to 1 Volts. Let's try it with a dummy source parameter.

Create a source as input offset voltage for Basel preamp¶

In [3]:

dmm = Keysight34465A(
    "kt_34465A_sim", address="GPIB::1::INSTR", pyvisa_sim_file="Keysight_34465A.yaml"
)

Connected to: Keysight 34465A (serial:1000, firmware:A.02.16-02.40-02.16-00.51-03-01) in 0.08s

In [17]:

dmm.volt()

Out[17]:

10.0

1. Instantiate Basel preamp with the source input offset voltage parameter¶

In [18]:

preamp1 = BaselSP983c("basel_preamp1", input_offset_voltage=dmm.volt)

In [19]:

preamp1.offset_voltage()

Out[19]:

0.1

In [20]:

preamp1.close()

2. Or, instantiate the preamp without source input offset voltage parameter and assign it later¶

In [21]:

preamp2 = BaselSP983c("basel_preamp2")

In [22]:

preamp2.offset_voltage.source = dmm.volt

In [23]:

preamp2.offset_voltage()

Out[23]:

0.1

In [24]:

preamp2.close()

Close source instrument¶

In [25]:

dmm.close()

Basel Preamp Remote Control SP983a¶

Remote Control SP983a connects with the Basel SP983c Preamp and provides user friendly computer interface for the preamp. While remote is connected to the basel preamp, knobs for gain and fcut on basel preamp needs to be set to remote position. When you are using remote with the basel preamp, QCoDeS provided driver for remote control can be used directly and it can be imported in your scripts as follows.

In [1]:

from qcodes.instrument_drivers.basel import BaselSP983a

This driver replaces the Basel Preamp driver when remote SP983a in use. The remote's driver has the same parameters 'gain', 'fcut' and 'offset_voltage' which can be used in exactly the same way as mentioned above after initialization of the remote's driver as below.

In [ ]:

preamp_remote = BaselSP983a("remote", address="address of the remote instrument")

In addition, remote's driver provides another parameter to check the overload status. It can be used as follows.

In [ ]:

preamp_remote.overload_status()