LabVIEW
Labview not detecting NI-VISA com port even though X-sens sensor is connected
Solved!
Most XSense sensors, except the MTi-600 which has a CAN port, provide poth an RS-232 port and USB port, and that USB sensor should be seen by Windows as a serial communication port by default.You can't use the RS-232 port if the USB port is connected as those two ports can only be used either/or, and if the sensor detects a connected USB host interface it will switch of the RS-232 port.
However if it was recognized as a serial port it would be visible under Ports (COM & LPT). Only devices which Windows recognizes as serial port will be accessible by NI-VISA & NI-MAX. If your Windows system installs different drivers for some reason (maybe because you have some XSense application installed which uses its own drivers, then NI-MAX can not see that device.
It may be necessary to use the CA-USB2-MTI cable instead of the CA-USB-MTI cable in order to use the XSense sensor as a serial port device that can be accessed from NI-MAX/NI-VISA. The CA-USB2-MTI cable has a little black box that converts the on sensor RS-232 port into a virtual USB-COMM port.
@constructionworker wrote:
Mr. rolfk, I tried the CA-USB2-MTI cable you mentioned, but it couldn't connect. I'm using MTi-G-710. is there an alternative solution?
If you use the CA-USB2-MTI cable, do you see in Windows Device Manager an entry for this device under Ports (COM & LPT). As long as your device does not get recognized by Windows as a serial port and properly getting installed as such (no yellow exclamation mark on the item in Device Manager) NI-VISA will not be able to see it.
@constructionworker wrote:
mr. RTSLVU The method you said sounds good, but how can I do it, I don't understand how to do it exactly?
Can you explain a little more about this, if I plug in the usb, it adds it directly to the Sensors group.
Test & Measurement devices are a special class of USB devices that have been specifically build to support this type of USB-TMC class. Only some T&M manufacturers like Keysight, Tektronix/Keithley, and similar manufacturers offering oscilloscopes, DMMs, etc. do that. It is fairly safe to assume that your XSens sensor won't. XSens is not a T&M company by a long stretch and would likely not even bother to checkout what the USB-TMC standard contains of.
XSens specifically uses their own Xbus binary protocol, although they also seem to support reporting data in the NMEA format that many GPS systems use. But the NMEA format is a pure talk only protocol, the sensor spits out a new record every so many milliseconds as an ASCII string.
Their documentation about how the built in USB port is used and what type of USB class profile it uses seems non-existent. Maybe there is some information in the SDK that you can download but a >500MB executable that must be installed on a system to just check out some maybe existing documentation is not something I want to do on my working computer.
Well, your responses are always concise and undetailed. So you use the CA-USB6-MTI with the MTi-G-710 GNSS/INS. I hope your order number for your MTi-G-710 GNSS/INS starts with 0779xxxx, otherwise you clearly try to use the wrong cable.
The MTi-710 can be ordered in 3 interface versions
Interface Variant RS232+USB RS422 RS485+USB
Order Number 0778xxxx 0779xxxx 077Bxxxx
necessary cable CA-USB2-MTI CA-USB6-MTI CA-USB4-MTI
In addition the CA-USB-MTI cable can be used with the RS-232 and RS-485 variant to directly connect it to an USB port, but then the device must be accessed through WinUSB (or libusb on Linux and Mac) in an XSens proprietary USB protocol (and you certainly do not want to venture into using VISA USB Raw communication to talk to the device in such a way, believe me).
So assuming you have used the correct cable for your MTi-710 product you first have to make sure that there is indeed a valid COM port in the Windows device manager. As long as Windows doesn't see a COM port for this device, everything else is a moot exercise. And then you can start testing with the XSens provided test software but likely will have to tell it somewhere which COM port to use to communicate with your sensor. The application likely won't try to find devices on the COM port on its own, as that could have some very interrupting effect on other potentially connected serial devices, which might not like at all being send binary XBus protocol messages to test if it is an XSens device.
And if that works you can switch off the XSens application and start trying to connect to the device in NI-MAX. And then go to the XSens website and download their XBus protocol document and start hacking. Binary serial communication can be a daunting task so get your caffeine and your stress relief ball ready. 😀
@constructionworker wrote:
I have the wrong cable. Because of this, I've given up on testing now. Is there a way to use the CA-USB-MTI on windows 10? What do I need to do to use it over WinUSB?
WinUSB is a DLL interface that could theoretically be called with the LabVIEW Call Library Node. Practically that DLL interface is complex enough that you would have to start playing C compiler yourself on the LabVIEW diagram to get it to work at all. So you would first have to learn C programming and well very far beyond the point of being able to write a "Hello World" program. Even for someone like me who knows what it would involve, it is magnitudes more expensive than buying the correct cable.
I'm trying to use the sample code shared by X-sens in Labview.
They do provide LabVIEW VIs???? If so they surely will use NI VISA functions (or maybe their .Net assembly?) If you talk about using their sample C code, well that is not something you can directly use in LabVIEW.
