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NI LabVIEW instrument drivers, examples, wizards, and Express VIs can help you do more with your time by reducing repetitive time-consuming tasks, leaving you to focus on developing the unique parts of your application.
Table of Contents
- Ready-to-Use Instrument Drivers and Examples
- Automatically Generating Instrument Control Code
- Express Analysis and File I/O
- Related Resources
Ready-to-Use Instrument Drivers and Examples
LabVIEW simplifies the automation of test and measurement instruments by reducing the amount of work you have to do to control your instrument. For example, LabVIEW instrument drivers save you time by eliminating the need to learn command sets specific to each instrument you use. However, time spent locating and installing instrument drivers is still time spent working on something other than your primary goal. The Instrument Driver Finder (ID Finder) in LabVIEW reduces instrument control setup time by up to 400 percent.
Figure 1. Instrument Driver Finder
The Instrument Driver Finder detects attached instruments and locates compatible LabVIEW Plug and Play drivers from the thousands of drivers on the Instrument Driver Network (IDNet). After you select the driver you want to install, the Instrument Driver Finder downloads and installs the driver API and associated examples, helping you establish communication with your instrument in less time.
After the instrument driver installs, use the Instrument Driver Finder to open examples covering everything from analysis and presentation to using your instrument driver. Example code in LabVIEW is ready to run, so you can use it as is for simple applications. For more complex applications, you can modify and extend the basic examples by adding new code or copying parts of several examples to create the application. Using sections of example code can save initial development time as well as testing and debugging time. You also can use the NI Example Finder to search or browse through example programs for instrument drivers.
Automatically Generating Instrument Control Code
Figure 2. Instrument Driver Wizards
When you cannot find an instrument driver for your instrument or you want to add functionality to an existing driver, LabVIEW wizards can automatically generate much of the code, which cuts down the amount of work you have to do. The Create New Instrument Driver Project Wizard uses templates for various instrument types to quickly create the framework you need to develop your instrument driver. The wizard populates the framework with common commands and includes detailed documentation about how to flesh out the generated framework and create a fully functional instrument driver.
If a driver already exists for the instrument you want to use but lacks a command you need, the Create Instrument Driver VI Wizard can generate the necessary LabVIEW code based on the information you provide. This wizard does the tedious work for you so you do not have to craft custom command strings and parse data returned from the instrument. To learn more about tools for creating and modifying instrument drivers, watch this webcast.
Express Analysis and File I/O
Figure 3. Express VIs and Configuration Dialog Boxes
Instrument connectivity and communication is just the beginning of any instrument control project. In addition to graphical code and textual math options, LabVIEW includes a wide array of Express VIs that you can use to set up the processing, analysis, or output you need by selecting options in a dialog box. Express VIs can help you accomplish the following tasks:
- Filtering, triggering, and gating input signals
- Taking distortion, spectral, and amplitude measurements
- Computing best fit curves and complex statistical analysis
- Saving results to files and reports
These tasks are just a few examples of the vast functionality LabVIEW provides. For a full list of Express VIs and other built-in VIs and functions, refer to the VI and function reference in the LabVIEW Help.
Related Resources
- Easily Connect to Any Instrument Using LabVIEW Instrument Drivers
- Webcast: Tools for Creating NI LabVIEW Instrument Drivers
- LabVIEW Help: VI and function reference
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This tutorial (this "tutorial") was developed by National Instruments ("NI"). Although technical support of this tutorial may be made available by National Instruments, the content in this tutorial may not be completely tested and verified, and NI does not guarantee its quality in any way or that NI will continue to support this content with each new revision of related products and drivers. THIS TUTORIAL IS PROVIDED "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND AND SUBJECT TO CERTAIN RESTRICTIONS AS MORE SPECIFICALLY SET FORTH IN NI.COM'S TERMS OF USE (http://ni.com/legal/termsofuse/unitedstates/us/).