Get information on Visa (serial) port physical location (slot) in PXI Real-Time (Pharlab)

[OrHirshfeld-SK]

Hello

I have PXI system with Real-Time controller (Pharlab OS) and many serial cards (about 6 cards).

The serial cards are two different models that each contain several serial ports (8431/8 and 8421/8).

And the enumeration of COM Port get mixed up and i wish to know to relate between COM numbering to which slot it's related.

Few methods I already considered:

1. I tried using Visa property node but it can know which card the COM port belong

2. I tried using System Configuration Libary and only manage to get Card general information and not which ports this card have.

3. try to get information from VisaConf.ini but found that ASRL and COM Auto-enumeration is the same.

4. I tried to look into NISerial.ini, NISerial.dbs and NI-RT.ini and didn't find any help there. 

Application Engineer from NI Support suggested to look into registry of Pharlab OS because it's windows based and hardware information should be stored in registry

More explanation on PXI enumeration problem:

the PXI produce auto enumeration for serial ports (COM3, COM4, COM5...) according to card slot but when there is a mix of the two models the system would then enumerate one model (8431) from 3 to 50 (6 cards and 8 port each) and the other model (8421) from 51 to 98. so if i have 8421 in slot number 2 and 8431 in slot number 3 it would enumerate 2nd slot COM59 to COM68 and 3rd slot  COM11 to COM19.

Why not just use NI-MAX to setup the ports manually? 

The system is essential and cannot be shutdown for a long period and it operated by people that are not highly technical so the client wishes to be able to swap cards without futher configuration.

Thank You

Or Hirshfeld

Application Engineer

SK-Electronika, Israel

www.linkedin.com/in/orhirshfeld

[OrHirshfeld-SK · Accepted solution]

Solved and upload to community solution example  

Get COM (Serial Port) Slot and Port physical location in Chasis

[sreekanthkr]

Hello,

I have a PXI system with 2 Serial cards. Each of the serial cards has 4 ports. The VISA resource name gets changed everytime i change the hardware slots. 

I use windows 7 64 bit OS. 

Would appreciate any help.

Thanks,

Sreekanth