Labview instrument stepper motor

[robin_ali]

I am a beginner in LabView. I have an instrument that I need to control via LabView. The LabView script (.vi) was already created a few years ago but the graduate student who was responsible for that script left and now we are unable to control the instrument. The instrument is an "mdrive 23 motor driver plus", which is manufactured by Schneider.  Correct me if I am wrong but is the first step in order to control the stepper motor is to download the correct driver, correct? If so, I went to C://Program Files/National Instruments/LabView 2013/instr.lib but the only instrument I see in that folder is "agilent 34401". So I went to go find the instrument in the NI instrument finder but I was unable to find it. Does this mean I am unable to control the driver even though it was working in the past? Or do I communicate with it via a VISA port because the driver is connected via a USB. What steps do I need to take?

[GerdW]

Hi robin_ali,

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@robin_ali wrote:

The instrument is an "mdrive 23 motor driver plus", which is manufactured by Schneider.  Correct me if I am wrong but is the first step in order to control the stepper motor is to download the correct driver, correct? If so, I went to C://Program Files/National Instruments/LabView 2013/instr.lib but the only instrument I see in that folder is "agilent 34401". So I went to go find the instrument in the NI instrument finder but I was unable to find it. Does this mean I am unable to control the driver even though it was working in the past? Or do I communicate with it via a VISA port because the driver is connected via a USB. What steps do I need to take?

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First you read the manual of your device to learn about the supported ways to communicate with your device. Then you can decide which way is the best option for you…

To download a driver you don't look into the instr.lib folder, this is the place where drivers could be installed to.

Not each device has instrument drivers available in the IDNet, especially not "simple"/"small" devices like a rather simple motor driver. Such small/simple devices often use a common communication scheme like Modbus (RTU or TCP) or CAN/CANopen: here you can use the generic Modbus or CAN libraries.

Why don't you post that old VI used for communication? Which functions are used in the VI?