Welcome to HTBasic 2021
HP Style Basic for Test and Measurement
What's New?
HTBasic 2021 introduces new LXI and VISA device drivers for instrument control! The Device Setup utility is now able to auto-discover compatible attached devices.
Purchase online or Download the Trial.
This release includes a number of other enhancements such as:
- HTBSelectDirectory added to the DLL Toolkit.
- MS .NET Framework now included in the install package so an internet connection is no longer necessary required to install.
- Updated Documentation.
- And more… including updates to the UI.
HTBasic is unique with its comprehensive Test and Measurement feature set combining an easy to use BASIC syntax plus a Visual ScreenBuilder for menu, dialog, and widget controls that simplifies designing user friendly interfaces and virtual instruments with powerful data input and graphical data presentation elements.
HTBasic Features
- For PCs running on Windows versions 7 through 11.
- Built-in syntax for controlling VISA, LXI and GPIB based instruments from companies like National Instruments, Keysight, and Keithley.
- A Visual ScreenBuilder utility replaces or supplements programmatic design of Widgets such as: meters, strip charts, bars, bitmaps, and clocks for Data Presentation; Menus–pull-down, cascade, and buttons; Data Input Controls–keypads, pushbuttons, radio buttons, scrollbars, sliders and toggle buttons; and Dialogs–for displaying errors, file names, lists, questions, and warnings.
- COMPLEX, REAL, LONG, and STATIC variable types together with matrix math, and extensive graphic commands provide unparalleled data processing and presentation capabilities.
- Advanced Math Library includes precompiled signal processing functions like FFTs.
- DLL Toolkit allows HTBasic to call Dynamic Link Libraries written in other languages like C/C++.
- Integrated debugger.
- Backwards compatible with legacy HP workstation BASIC (RMB) including the TRANSFER function for GPIB, serial, and file I/O while also supporting modern Windows standards on PCs.
VISA Instrument Control
HTBasic controls instruments that support LXI (Lan Extensions for Instruments) over ethernet, or other interface standards like IEEE-488 (GPIB/HPIB). HTBasic is vendor agnostic supporting almost any make of instrument, interface, or Data Acquisition (DAQ) card from suppliers like National Instruments and Ines.
Data Analysis
Support of Complex numbers as a data type along with built-in matrix math operations facilitate data analysis. HTBasic handles your data from start to finish by integrating acquisition, analysis, and presentation in one easy-to-use tool that provides both a code editor and a visual designer.
HTBasic also includes an Advanced Math Library with dozens of highly optimized precompiled functions for signal processing, curve fitting, and other higher order mathematical routines like Bessel and FFTs.
Visual Screen Builder
Create custom operator-interfaces, virtual instruments, and graphical data presentations from dozens of built-in widgets and dialogs with the visual ScreenBuilder app and/or the code based BuilderPlus (BPlus) extensions.
Widget controls include XY graphs, strip charts, meters, and bar displays. You can also create Dialog Boxes for user input or to display warnings, error messages and other critical information quickly and easily.
For example, a single strip chart widget can be configured a myriad of different ways as needed with dozens of core and specific attributes. And there are widgets for keypads, pushbuttons, scrollbars, toggle buttons, and more so you can customize screens with operator-interfaces and data presentation.
Windows Interface
HTBasic emulates classic features of legacy Hewlett-Packard workstations all in a contemporary Windows user interface with toolbar, status bar, pulldown menus, scroll bars, dialog boxes, and code editor. You can even execute Windows commands from within HTBasic as well as user created DLLs written in C/C++ and called through an integrated DLL loader.
Use Cases
"I used HTBasic at the DOJ to control a spectrum analyzer to monitor regional federal police spectrum usage, to determine utilization of federal police UHF channels."
"I used HTBasic at the NWS to control spectrum analyzers to monitor the frequency stability of NWS radiosondes, as they were put through temperature and pressure environmental chambers. It was also used for network analyzer control for a chamber built to test radiosonde antennas."
"We’ve been using HTBasic for over [20] years now and could not be more pleased with the product. We originally had our programs running on several HP 9845 workstations connected to a few spectrum analyzers. One by one these machines started to fail and we were tasked with finding a way to move our thousands of lines of code onto another platform. Your software product made this process fairly seamless for us and we were able to port our code over and then run it successfully on PC’s running Windows 95. Several years, several Windows OS updates, and several HTBasic updates later we are still using the same code on our test stations."
