National Instruments, a leader in instrument control for more than 30 years, announced the NI GPIB-ENET/1000 Gigabit Ethernet-to-GPIB controller along with new instrument control software including enhanced features in NI LabVIEW 2010, NI VISA 5.0 and new instrument drivers. GPIB-ENET/1000 performs up to four times faster on large data transfers, and up to three times faster on small byte transfers than its predecessor, the NI GPIB-ENET/100.
GPIB-ENET/1000 comes with a password-protected Web interface for easy configuration. It is RoHS-compliant and can communicate and be configured through networked computers, as well as control IEEE 488 devices from anywhere on an Ethernet-based (LAN) TCIP/IP network. Engineers can use the GPIB-ENET/1000 to share a single GPIB system among many networked users or to control several test systems from a single networked host computer.
“With the new higher-performance NI GPIB-ENET/1000 and LabVIEW 2010, controlling instruments will be even more intuitive,” said Phil Hester, senior vice president of research and development at NI. “National Instruments continues to invest in and support the instrument control product platform and maintain the company’s three-decade market leadership in instrument control.”
GPIB-ENET/1000 can interface with up to 14 GPIB devices that engineers can access from several network hosts via Intranet or Internet. It is compatible with 10BASE-T, 100BASE-TX and Gigabit networks with maximum GPIB transfer rates of up to 5.6 MB/s. It comes with an external DC power supply, optional rack-mount and DIN-rail/wall-mount hardware and is currently supported on Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7.
With an intuitive graphical programming interface, extensive support with more than 8,500 instrument drivers and other time-saving configuration and troubleshooting tools, LabVIEW 2010 makes instrument control easier for engineers using GPIB and other instrument control buses such as USB, Ethernet and serial. LabVIEW 2010 includes an enhanced Instrument Driver Finder (IDFinder) Wizard to help engineers locate instrument drivers and example code on the Instrument Driver Network and install them for immediate use. LabVIEW and the IDFinder significantly reduce time to first measurement by helping engineers get up and running without leaving the LabVIEW environment. Additionally, with the release of VISA 5.0, a standard for configuring, programming and troubleshooting instrumentation systems, engineers now can launch the IDFinder Wizard directly from Measurement & Automation Explorer (MAX), making it easier to find the drivers.
Readers can learn more about NI instrument control options by visiting www.ni.com/instrumentcontrol.
