SCPI Limitations

Connection interfaces supported

Because the 89600 Vector Signal Analysis (VSA) Software often coexists on the same computer as other instrument software, the SCPI listener for VSA is currently limited to the LAN Socket and LAN Telnet instrument interfaces to avoid conflicts with other instrument interfaces. Due to this limitation, the interface does not comply with the IEEE 488.2 SCPI standard.

Labview versions

The SCPI interface is not compatible with versions of National Instruments LabView prior to LabView 2010.

Architectural differences

The native 89600 VSA remote interface is based on Microsoft .NET Remoting and as a result, some attributes that are common to most SCPI interfaces (e.g. Event Status Register, Service Request, Status Byte) are not present or behave differently due to architectural differences between the technologies.

Functionality limitations

The SCPI interface provides a subset of commands that are exposed in the .NET API. The most commonly used features are available in the VSA SCPI interface, but the following feature areas are currently not supported using SCPI:

Multi-measurement capability
Printing
User Corrections
Fixed Equalization
Analyzer Configurations can only be created using one or more ADC type instruments. When multiple instruments are specified, they will each be in their own HW group.
User Math
Display Preferences (can be recalled but are not exposed directly through the SCPI API)
Mobile WiMAX - Map Editor
Macro Recording/Playback
Limit Tests (cannot be created dynamically, but existing limit tests can be selected, tested for pass/fail, and recalled from the file system)

Manually created measurement setups with the desired settings can be recalled programmatically to satisfy basic configuration of the subsystems that do not offer full SCPI support.