How communicate my VNA with the LabVIEW

[Jufraka]

Hi all,

I am doing my internship. I learned to use LabVIEW (the basics) and I need to communicate with the VNA (MS46122B) I found the drivers for it, however, it says that the interface is ethernet. I did not find anything on how to connect this way, can anyone guide me? 

what I need is really not very complicated, I want to get the measurements done basically for "n" times and I have a picture of someone who did it, but I use other drivers.

They use this drivers:

[Gregory]

I downloaded those drivers and they don't look like they use an ethernet connection. I would guess USB, serial, or GPIB. How can you connect to the instrument? When you plug it into your PC do you see the instrument in NI MAX / LabVIEW?

Another issue I noticed with the driver is that I downloaded the 2013 version, but the code was from 2020. So they have several things mislabeled in there, but still worth giving it a try if you can.

[crossrulz]

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@Gregory wrote:

I downloaded those drivers and they don't look like they use an ethernet connection. I would guess USB, serial, or GPIB. How can you connect to the instrument? When you plug it into your PC do you see the instrument in NI MAX / LabVIEW?

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If using VISA, it can do Ethernet.  The VISA Resource Name will be something like TCPIP0::192.168.0.10::INSTR (using 192.168.0.10 as the IP Address).

[NIquist]

+1 for crossrulz comment.  We have an Agilent N5232A VNA downstairs and I can see it from my lab.  I played around with LabVIEW communicating to it once, but didn't do anything fancy.  However, this is my VISA options in the building where the VNA is:

I'm pretty sure it was the last (inst0::INSTR) entry that allowed me to link up.

EDIT: Actually +1 to Gregory too.  These devices do show up in NI-MAX and both INSTR options seem to work.  The SOCKET one actually responds to *IDN? with a proper answer too, but it also times out. 🤔

You can see the instrument in the Network Devices section of Devices and Interfaces.

[Gregory]

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@crossrulz wrote:

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@Gregory wrote:

I downloaded those drivers and they don't look like they use an ethernet connection. I would guess USB, serial, or GPIB. How can you connect to the instrument? When you plug it into your PC do you see the instrument in NI MAX / LabVIEW?

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If using VISA, it can do Ethernet.  The VISA Resource Name will be something like TCPIP0::192.168.0.10::INSTR (using 192.168.0.10 as the IP Address).

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Ooh that's good to know. The few times I've worked with ethernet connections I've used the TCP functions.

[santo_13]

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@Gregory wrote:

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@crossrulz wrote:

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@Gregory wrote:

I downloaded those drivers and they don't look like they use an ethernet connection. I would guess USB, serial, or GPIB. How can you connect to the instrument? When you plug it into your PC do you see the instrument in NI MAX / LabVIEW?

---

If using VISA, it can do Ethernet.  The VISA Resource Name will be something like TCPIP0::192.168.0.10::INSTR (using 192.168.0.10 as the IP Address).

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Ooh that's good to know. The few times I've worked with ethernet connections I've used the TCP functions.

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Only instruments that support LXI show up under VISA over Ethernet, rest of the instruments are regular TCP/IP.

[crossrulz]

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@santo_13 wrote:
Only instruments that support LXI show up under VISA over Ethernet, rest of the instruments are regular TCP/IP.

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I'm not sure about that.  I'm fairly certain I've used VISA to communicate with non-LXI devices over Ethernet.  I'd have to dig around to prove that.  But it sticks in my head that I had a power supply that was not LXI compliant, but still used SCPI commands.  I guess in that case, it could have actually passed the LXI certification, but it just didn't go through it (if it is the instrument I'm thinking of, it also met the web server requirement).

[santo_13]

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@crossrulz wrote:

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@santo_13 wrote:
Only instruments that support LXI show up under VISA over Ethernet, rest of the instruments are regular TCP/IP.

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I'm not sure about that.  I'm fairly certain I've used VISA to communicate with non-LXI devices over Ethernet.  I'd have to dig around to prove that.  But it sticks in my head that I had a power supply that was not LXI compliant, but still used SCPI commands.  I guess in that case, it could have actually passed the LXI certification, but it just didn't go through it (if it is the instrument I'm thinking of, it also met the web server requirement).

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Here is the info you're looking for,

[Jufraka · Accepted solution]

Hello,
Thank you all for your answer, I was a few days in this confusion but finally thanks to the help of the community I solved. Finally it was just a confusion with the communication method, I had to create a TCP port through NI-MAX. Note that for the VNA MS46122B, only the raw socket works.