Will measurement studio interface and drive the Aligent 33220A?.

[Riscy04]

I seeking using C# programming to drive the Aligent equipment as well as NI equipment.
Aligent sell library for roughly $500 but appears to be limited to Aligent equipment only, it includes LAN interface.
As for measurement studio using standard package (same price) will the coverage be more extensive or restricted to NI instrument only and will it work for LAN?.
Could anyone offer example snippet program that successfully interface Aligent equipments.

Thanks

[SachaE]

Hi Richard,
technically, since your'e using c#, you're not limited to the communication methods provided for by either package. The Agilent website has software examples on the 33220A available here :
http://we.home.agilent.com/cgi-bin/bvpub/agilent/expandedresults/cp_ExpandedResults.jsp?NAV_ID=-11267.536883183.03&LANGUAGE_CODE=eng&contentType=Editorial&entityType=ED39&COUNTRY_CODE=US
but nothing on c#.
The driver listed on the NI website is just for LabVIEW, however the calls used are simply GPIB calls (in the LabVIEW driver we use VISA to communicate, but essentially this can be thought of as a layer over other low level drivers such as GPIB and serial etc.)
The Measurement Studio package gives you things (at the entry level) for controls / indicators for graphs etc, plus advanced analysis libraries. Essentially it's a bolt on to the programming language of your choice inside Visual Studio, and not a replacment to it, so if you're comfortable in talking to a DLL from c#, then you can use the appropriate low level driver for the gpib interface (NI or Agilent) and do you ibwrt and ibrd style calls to send and receive info from the device. All you really need then is the programmers manual which gives you the command set it's expecting.
The LAN interface I assume you're refering to would be the ethernet/GPIB boxes? Are you looking at the Agilent ones or the NI ones?
Measurement Studio allows you to build their complete T&M solutions within one environment, because it offers not only the best tools for performing instrument communication via GPIB, Serial, and with networked instruments across the network, but it also provides advanced DAQ, motion, vision, advanced analysis and visualization tools.
Hope that helps
Thanks
Sacha Emery
Applications Engineer
National Instruments (UK)

[bilalD]

Hello

If you use VISA or GPIB to talk to the device, NI-VISA and NI-488.2 (the GPIB interface) provide .NET driver interfaces that are installed as a part of the driver itself and does not require Measurement Studio. So you can create instrument control applications using C# and VB.NET without having to make direct C dll calls. Measurement Studio does provide you with .NET user interface controls like graphs, knobs, sliders and such, along with analysis and many other .NET libraries which are critical for professional test and measurement applications. It also integrates with the Visual Studio enviornment to provide code generation tools and project wizards. You can find more about Measurement Studio here.
If you already have an Agilent GPIB board on your PC, you can use NI-VISA to talk to that device as well. For more information, see the knowledgebase here. To find out more about NI's VISA and GPIB drivers with .NET, see this document here.
Hope this helps