E8257D IVI Driver Dll and MAX Settings confusion

[forrestjon]

Hi Guys,

I am new to IVI drivers and I do not understand how to properly incorporate The IVI driver for an E8257D RF signal generator into my LabView program.

I have installed the drivers and updated my IVI compliance package to version 2.3.

The documentation which covers setting up MAX refers to and outdated version of MAX.

I am really not sure what to try next. I want to try adding the driver session for the E8257D to MAX but I do not know where to

find the DLL. I see the Driver session for a spectrum analyzer (agesa_32.DLL) but I do not know how to add the DLL for the

RF Signal Generator.

There is an entry in the Instrument Driver Software Modules folder for an RF generator which includes support for the E8257D however

the DLL field is blank.

If anyone could help I would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks,

Forrestjon

[Dennis_Knutson]

When you downloaded the driver for the E8257D, did it run a setup program? All of the IVI drivers that I've used in the past had a setup that would put the dll in c:\VXIpnp\WinNT\Bin. The standard for IVI-C drivers calls for them to put here. You should also verify that the driver is actually an IVI-C driver and not an IVI-COM driver. They are not the same and cannot be interchanged. You can use an IVI-COM driver but you will have to write a lot of code to use it, cannot use the IVI class drivers that are in LabVIEW, and cannot set it up in MAX. I couldn't find the instrument listed by NI so I'm going to assume that you got it from Agilent.

[forrestjon]

Hi Dennis,

Thanks for your quick response. I did run a setup program. I found several dll's in my C:\program files\IVI\BIN directory.

I am trying to use the AgilentRfSigGen.dll which I found there.

Yes, this was provided by Agilent and not NI.

After updating MAX with the link to the DLL I ran my program again and received the following error:

IviRFSigGen Initialize With Options.vi<ERR>Driver Status:  (Hex 0xBFFA1203) Primary Error: (Hex 0xBFFA1203)

The session name or logical name could not be resolved to a session or driver session.
Elaboration: IviConfigServer.IviConfigStore.1: GetDriverSession failed. 

The specified name or logical name F1_Sig_Gen can not be resolved to a DriverSession.

It seems to me that I have something wrong in MAX or would this be an IVI-C versus IVI-COM issue ?

Thanks,

Forrestjon

[Dennis_Knutson]

I went to Agilent's site and it is in fact an IVI-COM driver as noted on the download page at http://adn.tm.agilent.com/index.cgi?CONTENT_ID=2887. An IVI-COM driver is based on ActiveX (hence the COM designation) and the dll is an entirely different type than the other IVI-C (C language based) drivers that you might have. You need to use the ActiveX functions in LabVIEW to call propertes and methods of the driver. If you want to read more about the differences between IVI-C and IVI-COM, I would recomend Brian Powell's blog at http://openmeas.blogspot.com/.