GPIB Instrument Driver Installation

[NahoY]

Hi,

I'm currently making software that communicates with several different type of GPIB instruments such as power meters, spectrum analyzers, etc.  With these instruments, I make different types of measurements.  Obviously, to run these intruments I download the drivers or make my own.  Now here is my question:  Is there a way to implement a driver installation interface in my software so it could allow any user to easily install drivers for any types of instruments?  What is also tricky is, these drivers have to be used in my code afterwards to get measurement data.  Hope my intentions are clear enough!

Thanks!!

[GerdW]

Hello NahoY,

it seems you are searching for IVI drivers. Just look for them in the forum...

[NahoY]

Wow! I didn't know about these IVI drivers! That's exactly what I need!  Just one thing though, I noticed the instrument classes supported by IVI... I didn't see Network Analysers.  What happens if I want to communicate with a Network Analyser, what class will it be in?

thanks again!

[NahoY]

Oh and one last thing, I just noticed I had to get VI analyser toolkit for this to work, and its not free!  ...guess I'll go back to the drawing board.

[Dennis_Knutson]

I don't understand the relationship between VI Analyzer and IVI. The VI Analyzer is used for checking your code for a variety of style recomendations. IVI is a standard for instrument driver interchangability.

For the instruments that fall into one of the 8 defined IVI classes, you should use them and IVI class drivers in your LabVIEW program. Right now, those are the only classes and your network analyzer isn't included. You can go to http://www.ivifoundation.org/ and check the status of other classes but I think the only additions on the horizon are AC power supplies and counter/timers. Since IVI has been around for 8 years and that's an average of 1 instrument a year, we'll probably have to wait another 2 years before these classes are released and if you want a network analyser class, you'll probably have to wait several more years for that to get approved.

Until this happens, you will probably need to provide your own drivers (or wrappers around existing drivers) for instruments that don't fall into existing classes. They may lack some of the true IVI functions such as state caching and simulation but the interchangable part would not be that hard to do if you can define a set of common functions that such an instrument has to provide.

[NahoY]

Thanks Dennis for the information and useful link (as always ;))

As for the VI analyzer, I didn't look hard enough and thought it was necessary to install the IVI compatibility!  That's just me being lazy, sorry!  It's surprizing though that they dont have that many classes.  Is it possible to create your own IVI driver?  There must be a "custom" class for drivers...no?

Thanks

[Dennis_Knutson]

Yes, you can have a custom class. IVI drivers are written in LabWindows/CVI. There is even a wizard to help you create the driver.

It's surprising to me too and also a bit frustrating. I was at NI Week in 1998 when the IVI Foundation was announced and there was a lot of hope then but personally, I've been a bit disappointed in the implementation. Initially, there were 6 classes proposed if I remember right, and the power meter and spectrum analyzer are pretty recent. I'm not sure of what all the reasons are behind all of the delays.

Message Edited by Dennis Knutson on 04-26-2006 08:43 AM