Before I dive down this rabbit hole, I was wondering if anyone out there has any experience accessing GPIB-base instrumentation in Xojo?
I have some instruments with IEEE-488 functionality and a National Instruments USB-to-GPIB dongle.
The instrument manuals seem to imply a fairly straightforward text-based (serial?) API, but the National Instruments software seems to indicate something horrendously arcane and complex.
I don’t need to do anything particularly demanding. I suspect I will have to use declares to access a supplied library. If anyone has done this, perhaps you’d care to share.
Hi Paul,
I used to play with NI devices a decades ago using VB6 samples supplied with drivers.
It shouldn’t be hard to translate VB declarations to Xojo.
Not sure if you have a chance to download the drivers, but I tried to download drivers and came across with option to download a VB specific drivers and samples.
Thanks. I’ll investigate that.
I have had good experience with a UART<->GPIB controller (like this one: https://www.amazon.com/Prologix-USB-to-Gpib-Controller/dp/B001UAUYPA) and using good old-fashioned serial communication to control test equipment such as Tektronix scopes, HP analyzers, etc. The advantage is that you won’t have to install any drivers, and your code works across platforms.
1 Like
That sure looks like a better solution, at least for the Mac. I have made some headway with the National Instruments dongle, but the software is horribly arcane and crashes on the Mac. I might order one of those. Thanks.