LXI

[qing_shan61]

Could anybody tell me which LabVIEW version support LXI control of instrument?

[Dennis_Knutson]

Support for LXI is in NI-VISA, so you need the latest for your version of LabVIEW.

[qing_shan61]

Hi Dennis,

My LabVEW is version 8.2.  Do you mean I need latest NI-VISA, or I need new LabVIEW?  Do I have to spend money?

[JoshuaP · Accepted solution]

Just get NI-VISA 4.6.2 and you should be fine.  It still supported LabVIEW 8.2.

http://joule.ni.com/nidu/cds/view/p/id/1605/lang/en 

I would also suggest looking at ni.com/idnet to see if you can find an instrument driver for your LXI instrument.  They reduce the amount of code you need to write in LV and typically include examples.  If you find your instrument on idnet be sure to extract the zip file directly to the <LabVIEW>\instr.lib directory.

Don't worry if you don't find an instrument driver you can still make direct NI-VISA calls it just requires you know which strings to send.

-Josh

[Brian_Powell]

All of the above answers are great, but I want to explain a few more things.

LXI builds on a collection of other standards, such as VXI-11, IVI, IEEE 1588, HTML, XML, etc.

Most LXI instruments (that have been made so far) use the VXI-11 network protocol to communicate much the same way that GPIB works.  NI VISA natively supports VXI-11, and can thus talk to those instruments.

As Josh mentioned, we have drivers for thousands of instruments, including many LXI instruments, on http://ni.com/idnet.  So that's the first place I'd look for drivers.

A few LXI instruments use a proprietary network protocol, and for those, you have to use a vendor-supplied IVI-COM driver to talk to the instrument.  These IVI-COM drivers can be used directly in LabVIEW, TestStand, and CVI.

There are also some LAN-based instruments that just use a TCP socket connection, as opposed to the VXI-11 protocol.  You can still use VISA to talk to these, but the procedure is a little bit different. 

Also note that NI Measurement and Automation Explorer (MAX) makes it easy to discover and connect to LXI instruments.  From MAX, you can get to the instrument's web page.  (And from there, you can configure network settings on the device, look at event logs on the instrument, etc.)

If you have a LXI Class A or Class B device, you can also use NI hardware for IEEE 1588 (such as the PXI-6682 and PCI-1588) to control network timing and synchronization.

So to make a short story long, NI has a variety of products that make it possible to work with even the most complex LXI systems. 

Brian

[Bottoni]

Hi Brian,

my company is developing an LXI instrument. We must support VXI11 capabilities on server side. Where can I find a example of ONC/RPC server compliant with VXI11 protocol? We are developing on windows platform and it seems very difficult to create it from scratch. NI-VISA MAX help us from client side but does it exist a National solution on server side?

Thank you.

Cristiano

[Brian Powell 2]

Hi, Cristiano.

We don't really have any software that makes the development of a LXI device particularly easy with respect to networking communications.  Theoretically, the VXI-11 specification gives you everything you need to create the RPC code, but I wouldn't claim that it is easy.

You should also be aware that the new IVI-6.1 HiSLIP specification more or less obviates the need for VXI-11.  The current LXI standard requires VXI-11, but it wouldn't surprise me if the standard were eventually updated to drop this requirement.  (To be clear, mDNS gives you a better form of device discovery over VXI-11, and HiSLIP gives you a better means of instrument communications.)

I assume your company is a member of the LXI Consortium.  (You must be a member to create an LXI-compliant device.)  I would encourage you to discuss your options among other consortium members.  Depending on when you plan to release your device, you may have some other options open to you.

Good luck!

Brian

[Bottoni]

Thanks for quick reply, you give me very useful informations. In my company we're also discussing the membership to LXI consortium and the LXI compliance because we prefer a newer communication tecnology like mDNS rather RPC call.

Cristiano

[Makoto]

By the way, does NI have a plan to implement HiSLIP support for next NI-VISA release?

[Brian Powell 2]

NI was involved in the development and standardization of HiSLIP, and we will support it.  I do not know when; I'm not sure there are any devices that implement HiSLIP for us to test against.

For a standard like this, usually the vendors with early implementations will get together and test their software and hardware with each other, and we only release official support when it looks like everything's working.

Brian