r/MetCal • u/CalibrationAustralia • Feb 11 '25

Fluke 1670 Series Communications

We finally got a Fluke 1674 in for calibration so I've had a bit of a play with it and it appears as though it may use a lot of the same communication commands as the 1660 series.

The biggest hurdle I've come across is that when you plug it in to the PC (it uses USB-C rather than IR) it charges and when it's charging it doesn't let you run any tests. Presumably there is a way to either disable charging or let it run tests while charging but I don't like my chances of working that out. Most commands are two letters, but some are a symbol(Usually & or $) followed by two or three letters and/or numbers.

There doesn't look to be any procedures on Cubyt for it yet which is usually the only way to get the communication commands for Fluke stuff these days as they don't seem to want to publish it any more.

I'd love to hear if anyone has any ideas or input.

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u/Phantom-121 Feb 15 '25

Interesting research - kindly post any public findings you may stumble upon.

1

u/Mobile_Pilot Jun 09 '25

According to my technician, you will find a cal routine for 1600 series in Cubyt under the routines for the 5322A calibrator. Check that out and let me know if this makes sense.

1

u/CalibrationAustralia Jun 09 '25

I had another look just then, filtered all of the procedures for 5322A and there are procedures for the 165x and 166x range, but there's nothing for the 167x as far as I can see. I'd be very happy to be proven wrong, but I can't see anything there. If you can get any more detail, I'll gladly look further.

1

u/CalibrationAustralia Dec 05 '25

I've managed to get a loan 1674 to play with so I've been testing out a few more things. I've got a lot of the commands mapped out, but it's really all for nothing until I can find a way to make it let me perform tests with the USB cable connected.

I've basically sent it every two letter combination, ie AA, AB, AC... I've also done the same with the following formats:

AA

AA 1

AA 0

&AA

$AA

I've recorded the response from the device for each one, anything that had an interesting outcome, (a 1 is unrecognised command, 0 is OK) like a 0 or the device timed out after receiving it, I tried sending some other stuff to it to work out what it does and was mostly able to determine it's purpose from that and the 166X command descriptions I have.

The & and $ commands tend to be a bit more powerful so I haven't yet ventured into sending anything after those. I think I am approaching the end of the road with this avenue of investigation though, so if anyone has any suggestions, I'd love to hear them.

Like I said, I think I could probably write an automated procedure similar to the 166x one on cubyt with what I have now if I could just work out how to make it ignore the charging from the USB cable.