Instrument Driver Management

[Z.Wei]

Hi all,

I use Labview 2013 and later to drive various lab instruments including power supplies, multimeters, signal generators etc. The Labview drivers can be found on NI's or vendor's website. However, since I use a lot of different instruments, how can I get the latest driver in a better fashion than go to the websites and check constantly?

Is there something like JKI for instrument drivers?

Thanks for letting me know.

[Sam_Sharp]

Not really - there is the instrument driver network (IDnet - http://www.ni.com/downloads/instrument-drivers/) but it's up to the manufacturers to update the drivers there and not all devices may be there.

My history with 3rd party drivers can be a bit hit and miss - sometimes they have released an update that completely breaks the driver and/or we have had to modify it ourselves.

My recommendation would be that if you get a driver and it does what you need, I probably wouldn't bother updating it unless you need some new functionality offered by a new driver.

[Kyle97330 · Accepted solution]

You really only ought to update your instrument drivers under one of three circumstances:

1. You have a problem with your instrument, data, or program that you can trace back to a bug in the driver

2. Your instrument has its firmware updated or you buy a newer version, and the newer version/firmware doesn't work with your existing driver anymore

3. You've updated your LabVIEW version and the old drivers don't work anymore

I know that when debugging generic PC problems or just doing PC maintenance it's always a good idea to update your drivers for your various bits of hardware, but you need to remember that most LabVIEW drivers aren't really device drivers in the traditional sense that Windows device drivers are, but are rather wrappers around VISA/IVI/etc communication protocols that have pre-set commands all made up for you.