Can u advice me if i can use C# .NET VISA drivers to control Agilent's 8960 using NI GPIB

[na-ch]

1. Can u advice me if i can use C#  .NET  VISA drivers to control Agilent's 8960 using NI GPIB ?

2. If yes, Please let me how do i start with : Where can i get the dlls to be used for compilation of C# code

[JÞB]

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@na-ch wrote:

1. Can u advice me if i can use C#  .NET  VISA drivers to control Agilent's 8960 using NI GPIB ?

2. If yes, Please let me how do i start with : Where can i get the dlls to be used for compilation of C# code

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1 Yes

2 You need Agilent IO Suite here

Why ask on an NI website for interfacing between MSN and Agilient?

[na-ch]

THanks for ur reply and ur question.. 

Our all other products are using NI VISA Drivers for controlling  NI's Instruments/Devices, We dont want to use Agilent's VISA drivers to control agilent Instrument.as we are already using NI's VISA drivers on our systems.

Can i use NI VISA Drivers to control Agilent Device, since the command set remains the same in both cases i.e SCPI. 

[JÞB]

Yes, VISA is an standard interface (Some small differences exist in implementation) but you can use agilient libraries with NI VISA when you install the libraries just select the option to keep NI-VISA as primary VISA

[na-ch]

Thanks.

But can u tell me why do u think that agilent libraries will be required in this case ? If we have VISA drivers and we send only SCPI commands thru our application using VISA drivers to the GPIB based instrument . Would i need to install Agilent Libraries ?

Would i face any issue or would there be any limitation of working with following components/ softwares only:

1. NI VISA driver 5.12

2. C# app code , which calls VISA driver api and sends commands to Agilent Device at its GPIB address

[JÞB]

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@na-ch wrote:

Thanks.

But can u tell me why do u think that agilent libraries will be required in this case ? If we have VISA drivers and we send only SCPI commands thru our application using VISA drivers to the GPIB based instrument . Would i need to install Agilent Libraries ?

Would i face any issue or would there be any limitation of working with following components/ softwares only:

1. NI VISA driver 5.12

2. C# app code , which calls VISA driver api and sends commands to Agilent Device at its GPIB address

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Well you could do that but you are in .NET why not use it?  those libraries have all the hard stuff written in .NET librarys and some of the 8960 personalities would take a long time to rewrite the extended commands lists. 

You can choose:

A) use the wheel that is proven to get you down the road. or

B) start chipping at a rock to make it roundish

[na-ch]

Thanks for ur reply again. but since am working on this VISA driver for very first time and looks like my research on VISA driver is not enough. So cld u let me know a little in detail about ur 2 comments :

1. ".NET why not use it" - What do u suggest me to use - Agilent Libraries with NI VISA Driver ? What will i get from Agilent Libraries extra, when i can have a send command and recieve response from NI VISA Driver , then why do i need agilent libraries

2. "use the wheel that is proven to get you down the road"

Because i also want to use as much as already exsisting and proven.

[JÞB]

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1. ".NET why not use it" - What do u suggest me to use - Agilent Libraries with NI VISA Driver ? What will i get from Agilent Libraries extra, when i can have a send command and recieve response from NI VISA Driver , then why do i need agilent libraries

What commands will you send and how will you intereprate the responses?  what should you do at device initialization? How do you check for errors? what do the errors mean? the library knows.

.

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[na-ch]

Thanks for ur reply. I think i didnt make my requirements clearer in my earlier posts ,

We want to rely on user to provide the correct SCPI commands (that his instrument will support) .

We dont need to show him a list of commands in send command dialog either.

We just need to send this command using send command (user will write the SCPI string) from visa to the right GPIB port and recieve the response from the device.

1. So could you suggest me if i shld use Agilent Libraries ? I think that if we have just the send recieve 

Also, i tried to go thru the docs of NI VISA Programmer Reference Manual, they dont provide any reference to C# apis just provide a reference for ANSI C and Visual Basic Apis .

2. Where can i get to know the corresponding API in .C# ?

3. What DLLs should i include so as i can see corresponding APIs in C# Project?

[JÞB]

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@na-ch wrote:

Also, i tried to go thru the docs of NI VISA Programmer Reference Manual, they dont provide any reference to C# apis just provide a reference for ANSI C and Visual Basic Apis . Wrong spot to goto you are not programming in VISA you are using VISA to communicate with instruments see STep 7 of the QSG attached

2. Where can i get to know the corresponding API in .C# ? See the help file and example that install with I/O Libraries

3. What DLLs should i include so as i can see corresponding APIs in C# Project? See the help file and example that install with I/O Libraries

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In short RTFM (Read The Friendly Manual) that come with the tool provided to make your instrument control application easy to develop.