@AnthonyA777 wrote:
Most instruments have a set of remote SCPI or IEEE commands to control them via GPIB, ethernet, etc, except for the pxie systems. We currently have a pxie 1084 chassis with a pcie 8381 connected with our computer and some pxie 4140 SMU cards. We have been using InstrumentStudio to do basic IV measurements, but we want the ability to remote control with this system.
For instance, how can we control a thorlabs USB device or a Keysight or Keithley instrument all together with the pxie system? Can it be done within InstrumentStudio?
Or is there a way to write some python code to control everything? Again, there are no command sets for pxie, so I don't see how this would be possible.
There is nothing 'remote' about controlling a PXIe card connected to the computer as the PXIe chassis is part of the computer's PCI bus through the 8381 card.
PXIe instruments are complex as low-level register read write is required to communicate over PXI (PCI) bus and hence not typical to have a SCPI command base. Instead all PXIe instruments come with dedicated drivers that implement the low-level register read-write and simplify them using wrapper functions (equivalents of commands).
Instrument studio out-of-box doesn't support Non-NI instruments, however one can develop Instrument Studio plugin to interact with third-party instruments. The question is who is going to put in that effort? almost everyone don't have free time to develop that.
If all that you care if to create a automation to control both your PXIe and GPIB/VISA instruments, sure, almost every programming language have APIs to do so.
For instance, you can use NI instrument drivers to control respective instruments and the VISA library to control GPIB instruments.
