Confused about and IVI versus plug and play instrument drivers

[djpritchard]

I'm just getting in to LabVIEW and see that when I go to download instrument drivers, there are several listings.  One is Plug and Play and the other is typically IVI.  What is the difference?  So far I've been through the Lesson #1 and Lesson #2 Basic Developer courses, but we haven't touched on the use of downloaded drivers.

[Norbert_B · Accepted solution]

IVI: Interchangeable Virtual Instrument. Using this software layer enables the developer to work with a "generic instrument" independend of the manufacturer (e.g. Agilent DMM vx. NI DMM).

Plug'n'Play driver: The driver for the very instance of an instrument, needed for the OS to identify and drive the instrument. The driver is device specific.

hope this helps,

Norbert

[smercurio_fc]

You can also read Types of Instrument Drivers, though Norbert pretty much summed up the highlights.