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About Instrument Drivers

Module by: National Instruments

Summary: In this section, you will learn about LabVIEW instrument drivers.

An instrument driver is a set of modular software functions that use the instrument commands or protocol to perform common operations with the instrument. The instrument driver also calls the appropriate VIs and functions for the instrument. LabVIEW instrument drivers eliminate the need to learn the complex, low-level programming commands for each instrument

The LabVIEW instrument driver library contains instrument drivers for a variety of programmable instruments that use the GPIB, VXI, PXI, or serial interfaces.

Instrument drivers receive, parse, and scale the response strings from instruments into scaled data that you can use in test applications. Instrument drivers help make test applications easier to maintain because the drivers contain all the I/O for an instrument in one library, separate from other code. When you upgrade hardware, it is easier to upgrade the application because all the code specific to that instrument is contained in the instrument driver.

The LabVIEW instrument driver library is located on the LabVIEW CD. You also can download drivers from the National Instruments Web site at ni.com/idnet. To install the LabVIEW instrument drivers, decompress the instrument driver file to get a directory of instrument driver files. Place this directory in the \labview\instr.lib. The next time you open LabVIEW, you can access the instrument driver VIs on the Functions>>All Functions>>Instrument I/O>>Instrument Drivers palette.

Getting Started Example

All instrument drivers include an example that can be used to test communication with the instrument. This example is usually called the Getting Started Example. Specify the correct GPIB address (or VISA Resource Name) for the instrument as configured in MAX.

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