Connec to USB instrument - extra software needed or only NI VISA?

[OnlyOne]

Hello,

if i connect a gpib instrument to my computer to send SCPI then i use NI VISA and NI 488.2.

What do i have to use/install if i want to use USB instead of GPIB?

Thx

[GerdW]

Hi One,

when the device implements a simple VCP (virtual COM port) you still only need VISA…

[rolfk]

It totally depends on the type of USB device. If it is a NI DAQ device, VISA won’t help you but you need to install NI-DAQmx instead.

If it is a device supporting the serial port interface VCP as Gerd mentioned, you simply access it as such (ASRL) and don’t need anything else besides NI-VISA. If it is a TMC (Test & Measurement Class) device (for instance most Rigol and Agilent/Keysight devices with USB connection) the same applies as NI-VISA comes with support for that too.

Any other USB device is however not supported by NI-VISA. Sure you could access it as USB Raw device but that is not practical since Windows 7 because of security restrictions that require signed drivers and also the difficulty of having to develop your USB class specific USB protocol on top of NI-VISA.

For such devices you should resort to the drivers provided by the respective manufacturer and interface to their .Net or DLL interface.

[OnlyOne]

Meanwhile its working. The connected USB is like a LAN conection which has an additional IP and i can connect using Socket USB to this USB-IP adress.

So my connect string is TCPIP0::xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx::5025::SOCKET.

In the beginning i thought i had to use a connect string which contains the serialnumber of the instrument...