Setting up a Raw TCP/IP VISA Socket using a Batch File instead of the NI-Max interface.

[John Roberts]

Good Morning,

We are looking to get our Metcal Automated program to setup a communication link with a Scanivalve DSA3207-PTP directly using NI-VISA's drivers. These units are very old so the only way is to setup a Raw TCP/IP socket in NI-Max which works fine.

What I would like to do for these units is to skip the user intervention in the NI-Max interface and have Metcal create this VISA socket on it's own in the windows command prompt using a batch file. (For those not familiar with Metcal, it can call DOS commands so we can get info in and out of the DOS environment.)

We have the IP addresses and the port numbers for these DSA3207's. I am hoping there is a way to do this using simple DOS commands.

Thanks, much appreciated.

John 

[rolfk]

I don't think there is any official DOS command that NI-Max could be forced to create such a link. Basically all VISA resources are stored in the VISA configuration file. The interesting part here is that these files have been moving around over the time due to increased limitations about what file locations an application is allowed to write to over time.

On my Windows 10, NI-Max 2023Q4, NI-VISA 2023Q4 installation the configuration file is located at:

<ProgramData>/National Instruments/NIVisa/visaconf.ini

In there you have a section for TCP-IP resources [TCPIP-RSRCS] and one for [ALIASES]

Playing around with the settings in NI-Max should give you a quick idea how they translate to entries in this configuration file.

Rewriting an INI file from DOS command line may be a bit of a challenge though unless you can find a command line INI file editor.

Remember: these locations are OS and NI-VISA version specific. So you may have to hunt around a bit depending on your setup.