Help In Measurement Automation Using MS Excel

[Hawaii596]

I have an oddball need for automation.  I won't go into the metrological details, as I know what I want to do.  But for purpose of this query, I want to make a series of periodic DC Voltage measurements using an HP 3488A (can't remember what model cards in it).  I'll be bringing in the DC volts on a variety of pins on the card, and sending them to a pair of output pins to be read on an HP 3458A (I may switch to a 34420A if it ends up being better).  I'll take the readings every few minutes 24 hours a day and plot them into an Excel spreadsheet, where I'll evaluate trend data to characterize relative stability and drift, etc. of a bunch of DC references.

My question is not about the metrology side of this, as I said; as I've already designed my measurements.

I know how to figure out my GPIB syntax, and for sowftware I have MetCal 7.2 along with the standard runtime NI IEEE 488 stuff (I do not have full Labview).  For hardware, I have two fairly late model NI PCI type GPIB cards (I think it's PCI - the small interface type that plugs into the back of the Dell PC.  These are the ones that are spec'd for two GPIB port operation in MetCal.

With all my other backgrounds, I am not versed in VBA programming, and not too great with writing software for such things.  I was thinking of getting a MetCal routine written for this.

So...  Can someone give me some ideas of the simplest way to get a routine created to run the HP 3488A switcher and HP 3458A (or other DMM) to automatically record these readings and log them into Excel.  Or, if it's a lot simpler, into a text full with some kind of delimiter that can be exported into Excel.

Do I need to get full Labview to do GPIB with Excel (I've looked at a few samples and tried tinkering with them, but they don't seem to work).

Any advice would be appreciated.  Even if there is a program I could buy that would do this task without my having to write programming code in VBA.  Or if someone has something near what I need and could give me a few hints on what I need to modify or do to make it work. 

If I could get the basics of what I need to do to kick start this....

[CalLabSolutions]

Do you have a procedure written (in some fasion) of what you need the switch and the 3458A (or other DMM) to do.  Number of measurements, switch settings, file format ect..

We can put together a procedure to collect the data and write it to a file. Then depending on the complexity of the file format, maybe an import it into Excel macro.

Send me some more information on what it is you need to do..

[metrologygeek]

There's a dead language called iBasic that HP used to ship with instruments that allowed for simple automation that would be ideal for this application...It had native support for manipulating excel spreadsheets.

[Hawaii596]

To CalLab Solutions -- very crazy this morning.  I'll send you a PM with my work email and we can discuss details.