Hello NI Community,
I am fairly new to instrument automation. For my work I have used a combination of TestStand, LabVIEW, and Python to make ends meet for our automated tests, but my team is now looking into a pure Python solution for our automation needs. To this end, I am looking to better understand however several different technologies I've come across relate to one another and how to get them to interoperate correctly.
The following are the observations I've made to the best of my understanding. Please correct me if I'm wrong on any of these.
- The NI Modular Instrument drivers are actually a wrapper over an IVI-compliant DLL that performs the actual instrument control.
- The NIMI-Python project, then, is simply a wrapper/binding written in Python and ought be compatible with any IVI-compliant DLL.
- National Instrument's Instrument Driver Network (IDNet) can be used to install IVI-compliant DLLs for a wide variety of instruments such as the Keysight N8734A PSU.
What I'd like to do is install IVI-compliant DLLs from IDNet and then make calls to them using the NIMI-Python library. I'm imaging a process by which I install a driver (DLL) through NI Package Manager, configure the driver in NI-MAX, and then point the NIMI "Session" object to the instrument's VISA resource. Is there a way to do this?
