Using NI-VISA with USB scanner

[Rob 16]

I went thourght the tutorial on the NI web site ("Using NI-VISA 3.0 to Control Your USB Device") to set up a USB scanner a customer wants to replace a serial scanner with. I got all device information from the manufacturer (Product ID, vendor ID, ect.) and the device still does not show up in MAX. It is in Device Manager though. Is there any way to troubleshoot this problem?

[Bob_Y.]

By scanner I assume that you mean a flatbed image scanner, like the top half of a copy machine. What are you trying to do with the scanner? Most devices that show up in MAX are DAQ devices, switches, or instrument I/O devices. A scanner would be neither.

If you are trying to get images from a scanner into a program such as a LabVIEW program, there is often special code that you have to run to do that. It would not be normal DAQ functions. For LabVIEW you might be able to use the USB camera version of IMAQ to read in scanner images.

Give a better hint of the final objective and maybe we can help you get there.

Bob Young

[Rob 16]

Sorry I wasn't more clear. It is a bar code scanner made by Code Corporation. I have just figured out what I was doing wrong in the VISA Wizard and it is now seen in MAX. Now I am having problems using the thing. When I open a VISA session, I go to the "Basic I/O" tab and then the "Read" tab below. When I click "Execute" I get the following error: "VI_ERROR_INV_SETUP" which translates to "Unable to start read operation because setup is invalid (due to attributes being set to an inconsistent state)." These are all the settable attributes:
User Data = 0x00000000
Maximum Queue Length = 50
Timeout Value = 2000
Termination Character = 0x0A
Termination Char Enable = VI_FALSE
IO Protocol = 1
Suppress End on Reads = VI_FALSE
USB Maximum Interrupt Size = 8
USB Bulk-Out Pipe = -1
USB Bulk-In Pipe = -1
USB Interrupt-In Pipe = 130
USB Alternate Setting = 0
USB Bulk-Out Pipe Status = -1
USB Bulk-In Pipe Status = -1
USB Interrupt-In Pipe Status = 0

Any ideas on what to do from here?