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How to use an OSICS/TUNICS instrument driver ??

Hi !
 
I am new to Labview and I have to design a simple interface to communicate with a Laser device. The Device is an OSICS instrument which contains slots for other lasers (ie. ECL, DFB) ( go to URL to get an idea of the machine I am talking about http://www.photonlines.com/PDF/Laser_pdf/Osics.pdf ) Well, I want to control only the ECL Tunics Laser. I am not sure which instrument driver to use- the OSICS one or the TUNICS one. I have made a basic layout, but my problem is that when I enable the machine- all the lasers get enabled, whereas I only want to enable the Tunics Laser. Also once I start running my VI, Any changes I make on the front panel doesnt seem to register on the machine. For ex. when I click enable and then run the VI, the lasers get enabled however if the laser is disabled while running the VI and then I hit enable, the laser does not turn on. And one last thing, I also have an OSICS soft front panel vi, how can I incorporate this into my VI ? (it doesnt seem to have any inputs or outputs). Any help in this area will be very much appreciated. 
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Hello Confused Undergrad,
You have several questions and I will do my best to help clarify.  I do not know the capabilities of the OSICS and TUNICS drivers that you have, but there are some basics for using vISA to talk to instruments.  Are you communicating via 488.2 or using Serial communication?  If you have an NI PCI-GPIB controller, for instance, then you can scan for instruments that are connected to the controller and address the device that way.  If you are using Serial communication, you will be addressing the Serial Port you want to talk to.  Both of these will appear in Measurement and Automation Explorer (MAX) under Devices and Interfaces.  In MAX too, is where you will be able to see the VISA resource name for your device, and then you can send command using the NI-VISA driver.
 
As for your question about your enable control not being read, I am assuming that this is because your program is written such that the enable button is only read when your program begins.  If you have a loop within your program, the control must be within the loop in order to be read repeatedly.  Depending on your program architecture however, polling can be inefficient and using an event structure would be more efficient.  With an event structure, you can configure an event for when the enable button is pressed and then execute your configuration code.  I recommend taking a look at some VISA examples and also looking at how to use an event structure, or re-arrange your program so that your control gets read when you expect it to be.  Using Hightlight Execution can help figuring out your dataflow.
 
I hope this helps.  Good luck with your application.
Regards,
Angela
Applications Engineer
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Hello everyone,

 

Does anybody have the OSICS/TUNICS driver? I am using a TUNICS driver to control the tunable laser module in OSICS, the strange thing is that I can control the power, but not the wavelength. I am using the GPIB interface of OSICS. Has anyone run into this problem before? Any suggestions will be highly appreicated. Many thanks.

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