.Net, VISA and the Thorlabs PM100USB

[AndyF.]

Hi

I am (trying to) develop an interface to the new Thorlabs PM1000USB meter using Thorlabs .Net managed library created by NI's plug-in for Visual Studio.  The managed library calls the Thorlabs driver which interacts with the hardware via the VISA runtime.

How do I determine the correct resource string for the device under the VISA environment? (if thats the correct question!)

FYI when I run the PM100 Utility the device is identified as 'USB0::0x1313::0x8072::P2000017::INSTR' but I guess this is the device acessed dircetly via the NI usb driver??

Any pointers greatly apperciated.

Andy Fulstow

[Mark M]

Hi Andy,

I guess the program throws errors regarding some incorrect resource string at the moment? 

Do you know if your PM1000USB is USBTMC compliant? If it is, it means you can use it as a standard GPIB instrument and control it using NI-VISA or test it in MAX.

If not, unfortunately NI-VISA does not support communicating with non-USBTMC USB devices.

[AndyF.]

Hi Mark

I actually don't get any errors thrown, it fails silently unfortunately....

So I need to check if the device is USBTMC compliant?  I will check with the manufacturers' support.

I guess MAX is some utility program that I can download, where do I find it please?

If the device IS USBTMC compliant then MAX will 'see' the device, I guess?, and I should be able to communicate with it??

Thanks for the response.

AndyF.

[Mark M · Accepted solution]

Hi Andy,

Yes please check with the manufacturer.

MAX is aka Measurement & Automation Explorer. It is a utility that should be installed when you installed Measurement Studio.

MAX does not see the device as PM1000USB even if it is USBTMC compliant. In contrast, an USBTMC instrument behaves just like a traditional instrument that is connected to your PC through GPIB. MAX provides diagnostics utility which you can check whether you can communicate with a GPIB device without any programmings.

[AndyF.]

Thanks Mark

installed LabView and it 'sees' the device as a USB device (as did the Thorlabs utility) at USB::0x1313::0x8072::P2000017::INSTR.

Making some progress talking to the meter now!

Cheers

AndyF.