Hello!

I am new owner of nanoVNA2 p4 and like it. I like it so much that I want to use it in my Antenna range replacing old HP8753 I currently use. And here lays my problem: how to programmatically read data retrieved from nanoVNA to VNA-View(VNA-QT)

Used with PC-based VNA-View nanoVNA offers finer resolution, convenient control, display and calibration storage. If I understand it correctly all this data treatment happens in PC. I want to keep VNA-View running and to acquire single frequency S21 readings at required times. How can I do that?

Currently with my HP8753 I use serial port communication. I send to it command specifying marker frequency and next command reads S21 value of the marker. How to organize the same interface with nanoVNA-QT (VNA-view)?

On 4/1/22 10:33 PM, a8421 via groups.io wrote:
>
> Hello!
>
> I am new owner of nanoVNA2 p4 and like it. I like it so much that I
> want to use it in my Antenna range replacing old HP8753 I currently
> use. And here lays my problem: how to programmatically read data
> retrieved from nanoVNA to VNA-View(VNA-QT)
>
> Used with PC-based VNA-View nanoVNA offers finer resolution,
> convenient control, display and calibration storage. If I understand
> it correctly all this data treatment happens in PC. I want to keep
> VNA-View running and to acquire single frequency S21 readings at
> required times. How can I do that?
>
> Currently with my HP8753 I use serial port communication. I send to it
> command specifying marker frequency and next command reads S21 value
> of the marker. How to organize the same interface with nanoVNA-QT
> (VNA-view)?
>
I'd start by looking at NanoVNA-Saver - it's all python, and it has
routines in there to talk to all the VNAs - you could probably intercept
the measurement data every time it sweeps and feed it out to a socket or
other interface.

I don't know that any of the "PC helper" applications (like NanoVNA-QT,
NanoVNA-Saver) provide an interface so that you could "query" the app as
it "runs" the VNA.

I use a command line python program (nanovna.py) to run a non-2 NanoVNA,
but the NanoVNA2 has a different protocol (binary vs ascii, for one thing).

Thank you for your reply. NanoVNA-Saver - I tried this application. For whatever reason it does not feet my display (Win10 laptop, 1920x1080 resolution) I can not reach bottom of GUI ... tried it again now - same thing.

I imagined how this can be done. If my application somehow send to VNA-QT command to stop acquisition without shutting down VNA-QT, data from latest scan will be stored in memory as an array/table: frequency values vs S21 values. My application would read S21 values for required frequencies and re-start VNA-QT acquisition. That's all that is needed.
All this is very speculative. I have minimal experience in programming. Application I use for plotting is written years ago in Visual Basic for Applications. I can modify it but have no idea what to write there.

Hi a8421,

Did you manage to resolve your data acquisition issue? Did you "hack" the NanoVNA-Saver code?
I'm also trying to build an antenna range, which allows me to produce polar radiation graphs and I'm trying to decide the best way to control everything.

Kind Regards
Papasean

No, I put it aside for the time being. Still interested to make it work.
I want to make it work with VNA-QT. There is an API file: linxavna.dll as part of this software. I tried to write call to it from Excel VBA - it does not see the API file. I do not understand why. If you manage to figure it out please share with me. I am software-illiterate.
Cheers,