Converting Visa Resource name to device name?

[SeriousTyro]

Hi guys,

From the "VISA resource name" I am able to get all the GPIB devices connected to my computer.

I am wondering how I could make it display the device names, like "Agilent E3632A" instead of simply "GPIB::6::INSTR". 

Thanks,

William

[Dennis_Knutson]

You can assign any alias that you want in MAX and they will then appear in the dropdown.

[SeriousTyro]

But if I were to create a runtime version of it and run it on another computer with the same equipment, the GPIB addresses would be different unless changed manually.

[billko]

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@SeriousTyro wrote:

But if I were to create a runtime version of it and run it on another computer with the same equipment, the GPIB addresses would be different unless changed manually.

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It's best to have conistency across testers.  They should just have the same addresses.

[billko]

I guess what you could do is *IDN? each equipment and save the results addresses to globals, depending on what results you find...

[Dennis_Knutson · Accepted solution]

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@SeriousTyro wrote:

But if I were to create a runtime version of it and run it on another computer with the same equipment, the GPIB addresses would be different unless changed manually.

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If you use aliases, it is irrelevant what the actual GPIB address is, though I agree that it is generally a good idea to keep your testers configured the same way.

What are you really wanting to do? There is no mechanism to populate the actual VISA Resource Name control by anything other the alias or canonical name. You can use strings as inputs to VISA functions so as already mentioned, you can find specific instruments by doing a *IDN? for all resources and then parsing the responses. Not sure if that is any easier than just assigning a meaningful alias (i.e. DMM, Scope) to the instrument in the first place.

[SeriousTyro]

Like the idea. Unable to test it right now, but if I were to retrieve the IDN of each equipment it would say the name of the equipment or something more descriptive instead of the GPIB address?

Just started learning LabView so I don't know a lot of functions. 

I'm guessing I could get all the address results from "Visa Resource" and put it into a block that calls the IDN of each device and display the result?

Does that sound about right or is there a block that does all that for you?

Thanks,

William

[Dennis_Knutson]

You can use the VISA Find Resources function to search for all GPIB instruments. This returns a string array. Wire it into a for loop.