A few years back, I bought an RND Lab RND 320-KA3005P bench power supply both for its capability of delivering up to 30V @ 5A, and for its USB serial control channel. The latter can be used to both read out voltage/current data and change all settings which are accessible from the front panel, including voltage and current limits.

This weekend, I finally got around to writing a proper Python tool for controlling and automating it: korad-logger works with most KAxxxxP power supplies, which are sold under brand names such as Korad or RND Lab.

Now, basic characteristics such as I-V curves are trivial to generate. For instance, here's the I-V curve for an unknown RGB power LED.

It's based on three calls of the following command.

bin/korad-logger --voltage-limit 5 --current-range '0 0.2 0.001' --save led-$color.log 210

At a sample rate of about 10 Hz and 1 mA / 10 mV resolution, the bench supply won't perform miracles. Nevertheless, it is quite handy. If you measure only current (e.g. in CV mode), or only voltage (CC mode), you can even get near 20 Hz.