Many Instrument Control Buses, Just One LabVIEW
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Over the past 20 years, there have been many available communications buses to control your instruments. Throughout this time, NI LabVIEW software has remained constant for connecting to and controlling your instruments. As new instrument control buses emerge, NI continues to innovate on LabVIEW to provide the premier instrument control experience. With LabVIEW, you can do the following:
- Control more than 6,000 instruments with downloadable drivers at the Instrument Driver Network (ni.com/idnet)
- Use NI-VISA to create instrument control applications without worrying about the communications bus
- Run applications on Windows, Macintosh, and Linux® operating systems without changing code
LXI
Based on standard computer networking technologies, LXI (LAN eXtensions for Instrumentation) is helpful to use when there is a large distance between your instruments. LabVIEW provides the best LXI connectivity with the following capabilities:
- Automatically scan your local subnet for connected instruments using NI Measurement & Automation Explorer (MAX)
- Perform distributed instrument timing and synchronization with support for the IEEE 1588 protocol
- View LXI instrument configuration Web pages directly from within NI MAX
USB
With its plug-and-play capabilities and ease of use, USB has become a popular bus for benchtop and portable applications. To further simplify your instrument control applications, LabVIEW provides the following:
- Automatic detection of connected USB instruments
- Use of standard GPIB SCPI commands with USBTMC compatible instruments
- USB plug-and-play support for select Tektronix oscilloscopes
GPIB
A reliable communications bus for 30 years, GPIB is still a widely popular choice for instrument control. Continue to maximize your current GPIB instrumentation with the following LabVIEW features:
- Ability to see connected instruments automatically as NI-VISA resources
- Simplified communications debugging with the NI Spy system monitoring tool
- Full support for the IEEE 488.2 communications protocol for advanced functionality
PXI
With the fastest throughput and the lowest latency, PXI has become a standard for high-performance applications. Get the most out of your PXI systems with the following LabVIEW features:
- Easily synchronize instruments with a simplified API
- Gain full system visibility from within NI MAX
- Switch from PXI to PXI Express instruments with no code modifications
View a tutorial on controlling your instruments with LabVIEW.
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This article first appeared in the Q1 2008 issue of Instrumentation Newsletter.
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