Sabio Instruments Application Note

January, 2017

Remote Connections to 6000 Series Instruments

You can establish a remote connection to a 6000 series instrument using the free and widely available
VNC utility. The connection will allow you to view and operate the front panel of the instrument in real
time.

Please download and install version 4.1.3 of the VNC application:

Newer versions of this utility are available on the internet but only this version is known to work with
the 6000 series instruments.

Check the network settings on the instrument (select Setup->Communications->Networking) and

confirm that it is configured for network connections. In the example shown below, the instrument is
configured to use a static IP address. This is the recommended configuration since you will need to
know the IP address in order to connect remotely. If the instrument is configured to obtain an IP
address automatically, the address it obtains may change over time making it difficult to establish a
connection.

You can confirm that the instrument is connected to the network using ‘ping’. Open a command prompt
and ping the instruments IP address. It should respond as shown:

$ ping 192.168.0.115

Pinging 192.168.0.115 with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 192.168.0.115: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.0.115: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.0.115: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.0.115: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64

Ping statistics for 192.168.0.115:

Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 0ms, Maximum = 0ms, Average = 0ms
Confirm that remote access is enabled on the instrument. Select Remote Access from the Utility menu
and confirm that the “Remote Access (VNC)” box is checked on the menu. The instrument will prompt
you to let it restart if you change the setting.

Start the VNC utility and enter the IP address of the instrument. The instrument expects to connect
using the default port for VNC (5900) so it is not necessary to include the port number in the Server
field.

You should see the front panel of the instrument and you should be able to operate it as if you were
standing in front of it. You can capture screen shots from the instrument if desired. You can use the
screen capture built into Windows (Alt+PrtScn) but you will need to change an option in VNC first.

Select the small icon at the upper left of the VNC window. Choose Options from the menu and then
select the Inputs tab. Un-check the box labeled “Pass special keys directly to server”. Now when you
press Alt-PrtScn on a Windows computer it will capture the VNC window instead of sending the
keystroke to the instrument.