Driver wizard does not allow USB to be selected

[J_D_Smith]

I am trying to control a Keithley 2230-30-1 Tripple Channel DC Power supply with NI-VISA through USB.

When I connect the power supply and go to VISA interactive control, there are no options for a usb device.  I know that the USB port I am using works, and that the PC recognizes that the device is manufactured by Keithley (using the lsusb command).

In addition, when I attempt to use the NI-VISA Driver wizard, the option to set up a USB device is grayed out.

So far I have had no success with this device.  However, this PC and this version of NI-VISA has been able to sucessfully connect to and control a GPIB device using both LabVIEW and PyVISA.

I would appreciate any help I can get on this matter.  Thank you.

Useful Information:

PC: Dell Optiplex 755

OS: Cern Scientific Linux 6 (SLC6) x86-64  (a distribution based on and

VISA version: Version 5.4 (32-bit version as there is no 64 bit Linux VISA yet)

I can post additional information if required.

[Dennis_Knutson]

I can't help with the Linux part but the wizard should not be used. The instrument is USBTMC and there would normally be no need to create your own driver.

[J_D_Smith]

Thank you for your reply.  Ok.  Unfortunately, VISA interactive control does not seem to be able to see the device, and no USB devices show up as options when I run LabVIEW.  Is there some extra configuration necessary for USBTMC devices?

[Dennis_Knutson]

Sorry, as I said, I can't help with Linux issues.

[nyc_(is_out_of_here)]

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@J_D_Smith wrote:

Thank you for your reply.  Ok.  Unfortunately, VISA interactive control does not seem to be able to see the device, and no USB devices show up as options when I run LabVIEW.  Is there some extra configuration necessary for USBTMC devices?

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I am using an Arduino clone on my Ubuntu Linux laptop. It was detected automatically.

http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/find-out-linux-serial-ports-with-setserial/   to see what serial port, if any, is detected.

You most likely have a driver issue. In Linux just as in Windows, the proper driver needs to be installed.

Why are you using the Driver wizard?????

[warEagle12]

Hello!

Check out the USB Issues on Linux section of the NI-VISA 5.4. It offers a few suggestions to access a USB device:

http://download.ni.com/support/softlib//visa/NI-VISA/5.4/linux/README.txt

Thanks!

[pankaj]

There is no need to run the wizard to use a USBTMC instrument with NI-VISA on any OS. Specifically on Linux, there is no need to run the wizard for any USB device. The reason is that NI-VISA will be able to find and use any USB device that is not claimed by another driver. I believe this is the root of the issue you are seeing. On some distributions, there is a default usbtmc driver that claims all USBTMC instruments and hence NI-VISA can't see them. To test this, just run 'rmmod usbtmc' as root and then launch NI-VISA interactive control to see if it shows up now. This will confirm if that is the issue. As long as the driver is present, it will claim the device any time it is unplugged and replugged the instrument (or you restart the machine). One way to prevent it is to black-list the usbtmc driver (echo blacklist usbtmc >> /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf) and this may be an acceptable solution if you want to always use NI-VISA for your USBTMC instruments.

There could also be the problem related to permission in addition to the above problem, and the document linked in the above post has information on how to add permissions so that a non-root user can access the USB instrument.

[realmarklar]

Thank you for the information on "Blacklisting usbtmc", that solved my problem. NI you might want to include this in the apporpriate FAQ as something to try.