Electronics Testing & Characterization Lab : Projects

HP4142 Keithley Emulation

General Information

The Agilent™ 4142 has been a widely used SMU for over a decade. Competing, newer SMUs can be found in the market offering equivalent functionality, added features, and smaller size at a lower cost. However, such units rarely provide drop-in replacement capabilities, due in most part, to the use of different programming languages. This
limitation makes them difficult to be used as drop-in replacements for 4142s in established testing and characterization set-ups. One such case is the 2600 series SMUs from Keithley Instruments.

The goal of this project is to provide plug-and-play functionality between the Agilent 4142 and the Keithley 2600.

Project Description

To achieve the goal of this project, an emulation software was developed. This software consisted of scripts to handle the different layers that were needed to interpret the Agilent 4142 commands on the Keithley 2600.

The code written for this project can be found on the Download sections.