Wrap It Up

Wrap It Up!

In this chapter, we learned the basics of instrument connectivity. We looked at some hardware aspects of communicating to external instruments through GPIB, serial, and Ethernet interfaces. And, we learned how to communicate with them quickly using the Instrument I/O Assistant Express VI, and how to use the VISA framework of instrument communication functions. These are all the tools you need to start communicating with your instruments from LabVIEW, today!

The GPIB interface is a widely accepted standard for many instruments, and you can often obtain an instrument driver in LabVIEW for your particular instrument. Serial communication is cheap and conceptually simple, but in practice requires much troubleshooting and tweaking. Ethernet is easyjust find a network cable, and you are ready to go!

SCPI, the language that many instruments speak, allows you to send simple ASCII commands to instruments, and the VISA instrument communication framework will get those commands to the instrument regardless of the hardware connection type. With VISA, you use LabVIEW to communicate with a plethora of instruments over a variety of connection types including GPIB, Ethernet/TCP/IP, Serial, USB, and many more.