May 3, 2021
Photons Canada news

Photonics in Advanced manufacturing – Optiwave

OptiInstrument Software for Characterization and Testing Automation of Devices at Manufacturing Floor

Ahmad Atieh, Mihail Raytchev, Jaydeep Brahmbhatt, Alexander Raytchev

Optiwave Systems Inc. Ottawa, Ontario, K2E 8A7 Canada

ahmad.atieh@optiwave.com

Optiwave’s OptiInstrument software is a new tool for manufacturing that can communicate with and controls a variety of instruments using Standard Commands for Programmable Instruments (SCPI). It enables remote and local communication via TCP/IP and other industry standard communication protocols such as GPIB, USB and Serial port (RS-232 & RS-485).

OptiInstrument enables the automation of testing and characterization of various instruments and modules from different vendors using a powerful command sequence builder. The command sequence builder allows the user to build sequences of SCPI commands with logical control blocks such as while, if, else, elif (else if) and for loops. The results of the executed command sequences are saved in JSON or txt file formats. OptiInstrument allows users to convert the sequence of SCPI commands into a Python script for further editing and execution within either OptiInstrument GUI, command prompt, or Windows PowerShell. Users can import the SCPI command tree of their instruments into the SCPI Commands pane of the GUI, then build their desired sequence of commands. OptiInstrument software offers users the ability to parse the results of the executed sequence of SCPI commands using a post-processing pop-up window. The parsed datapoints can be graphed using 2D or 3D graphing tools, and saved in CSV and text file formats. Figure 1 shows the GUI of OptiInstrument software.

Testing and Characterization of manufactured products can be automated using OptiInstrument software. A sequence of SCPI commands including logic control commands can be used to enable pass/fail tests as well as measuring the product under different conditions then the collected data is processed in OptiInstrument software or externally. The measured data can be saved in a JSON or txt file formats for external processing. Long term stability testing is also possible using OptiInstrument software using the available logic commands in the SCPI command sequence. Examples that demonstrate the capabilities of OptiInstrument software for different manufacturing applications are available in OptiInstrument Example Library using EXFO LTB-8 platform.

Please visit Optiwave’s website at www.optiwave.com to download 30-days free trial of OptiInstrument software.

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