Hi everyone, I’m trying to get my Thorlabs BC106N beam profiler to work with LabVIEW, and I’ve hit a wall. After connecting it via USB, I expected the profiler to appear in NI MAX under Devices and Interfaces, but nothing shows up. The only things listed are COM4 and COM5, both labeled “Standard Serial over Bluetooth link,” which seem unrelated. I later learned that NI MAX typically doesn’t detect USB devices unless they support VISA-compatible standards like USBTMC. I then tried verifying whether the right drivers were installed. According to the Thorlabs documentation, LabVIEW drivers and components are only installed if a LabVIEW installation is detected at the time of installing the Beam software. The first time I installed Thorlabs Beam, LabVIEW wasn’t on my machine, so I uninstalled everything, then reinstalled Beam after installing LabVIEW 2025. During the first install, several components like NI-VISA Runtime 17.0 were installed. During reinstallation, NI-VISA wasn’t reinstalled, likely because the system already had it, and the whole install finished much quicker. Everything related to Thorlabs Beam got installed into a single folder: C:\Program Files (x86)\Thorlabs\Beam. Inside that folder, I found multiple DLLs: TLBC1_32.dll, TLBC2_32.dll, and TLPB2_32.dll. Based on the installer and some AI-assisted troubleshooting, I think TLBC1_32.dll is the correct driver for the BC106N, but I haven’t been able to confirm that definitively anywhere in the docs. I also tried checking if the driver was correctly integrated with LabVIEW, but didn’t find anything under the expected instr.lib folder for LabVIEW 2025. So, following some advice, I manually moved the TLBC1 driver folder from a previous LabVIEW instr.lib directory into the new one for LabVIEW 2025, hoping that would make the VIs available. I’m not sure if that was the correct approach, or if it messed something up. When I run the example LabVIEW VIs (or even TLBC1_Initialize.vi), they ask for a VISA resource name, but my device doesn’t show up in NI MAX or in the list of VISA resources. It also doesn’t appear as a COM port. In Device Manager, the profiler shows up under “Universal Serial Bus devices” and uses the driver USBGenVs64.sys, which is a Thorlabs USB driver — so it’s not being exposed as a VISA/serial instrument either. I’m confused about whether this device is supposed to use VISA at all, or if it only communicates via Thorlabs’ DLLs directly. The examples seem to expect a VISA resource, which adds to the confusion. I’m also unsure whether the VXIpnp drivers mentioned in the documentation (32-bit and 64-bit instrument drivers) actually got installed, or how to verify that. I’ve worked through a lot of this with AI help, including file listings, PowerShell scripts, environment variable checks, and DLL detection — and I still can’t tell if my driver setup is correct, if the LabVIEW integration is working, or even what communication layer (VISA vs DLL) is really required here. Any advice on how to cleanly verify the driver setup and properly connect LabVIEW to this device would be really appreciated. I’ve attached screenshots of the manual . Should i reinstall ni visa runtime? The relevant links for software references and manual are given below. https://www.thorlabs.com/drawings/a47d10a05dd021e3-BB7A4B6D-BC1E-5FD9-3E37F0CAC0F2F289/BC106N-VIS_M-... and the manual - from page 35 u can get a good idea what NI VISA Runtime is https://www.thorlabs.com/drawings/f7cbcd166ab4dea5-D0112D83-D75D-7862-09E866431D20EA08/BC106N-VIS_M-... . If I search up the particular drivers mentioned in the software reference pdf on the web I did not get any download links or anything in that case.
