NI MAX and IVI-COM

[MattheisS]

Can TestStand call Agilent's IVI-COM Drivers and how to configurate them with NI MAX?

Agilent 33220A

Agilent 34970A

[Scott_Richardson]

Mattheiss -

The TestStand IVI step types do not support IVI COM drivers; however, TestStand has an ActiveX/COM adapter that you can use to create an instance of the COM instrument session and call the methods and access the properties directly from the driver. Using the ActiveX/COM adapter is not different than using LabVIEW or CVI, except that you have to create a step for each call to the driver. Another option would be to create a code module in LabVIEW or CVI or the language of your choice, to encapsulate the functionality that you want to expose to TestStand and then have TestStand call the code module passing the appropriate parameters that the code module defines.

TestStand itself does not offer any interface to configure MAX instruments or tasks. As for NI MAX and IVI COM, I do not think that NI MAX supports configuring IVI-COM drivers, only IVI-C drivers.  I think that you will have to do this through an Agilent GUI.

[Scott_Richardson]

Mattheiss -

I incorrectly told you that you cannot configure IVI-COM drivers in MAX. You can use NI MAX to enter both a Prog ID and specify a published API of type "IVI-COM".  These are the only COM specific entries that MAX exposes. See the attached png image that someone shared with me as an example.