Serial port Connection without VISA

[Ludmilla]

Is there any way to communicate to serial port without VISA?

The thing is that VISA is required to be installed on deployed machine. It is not appropriate for my customer.

Thank you for any help.

[Ludmilla]

Is there any way to communicate to serial port without VISA?

The thing is that VISA is required to be installed on deployed machine. It is not appropriate for my customer.

Thank you for any help.

[ivelson]

Is there any way to communicate to serial port without VISA?

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every programming language have their own way of communicating certain protocols (i.e. Visualbasic uses MSComm control to communicate serial ports http://support.microsoft.com/kb/823179 ).

LabVIEW uses VISA only to communicate serial ports if you have simple architecture like PC to device connection. (and i certainly convinced that it is pretty much easier compare to text-based language). but if you have another software like OPC, then you can communicate serial devices in other ways (via OPC and not VISA). And oh btw, there are also converters such as serial-to-ethernet devices, which will make us possible to communicate serial devices via TCP protocols.

when you create executable files, just check NI VISA run-time (together with LV run-time), and it will automatically include in the deployed machine. Is that very critical in the part of the customer???

[Ludmilla]

They (customer side) don't want to have any additional SW on their computers. They just want to click on exe-file and work with the script immediately. It's their decision. Maximum, what I can do - to add some dll-files into folder with my script (actually I've used this way to add LabView Run-Time Environment).

If this approach is acceptabe according to VISA, and someone knows which files to put into folder with the script, it would be good dicision for me.

According serial devices communication via TCP protocols, Ivel, could you please provide me with some details or examples?

Thank you

[smercurio_fc]

Are you a contractor, or do you work for a company that does consulting work? Either way, part of your responsibility is to instruct the customer that sometimes what they want is simply silly. This is one case of that. If they are so hell-bent on this requirement then you can tell them it's going to cost more money since you have to find a work-around for what's basically provided off-the-shelf. That, of course, might change their mind. I have found in the past that when you tell customers that it's going to cost more money they usually realize the errors of their ways. What work-arounds exist? Well, you could:

• Use the operating system API to communicate with the serial port. On Windows this means calling Windows DLLs. Good luck with that.
• If you're on Windows you can use .NET. Of course, this will require installing .NET, if they don't already have it.

[smercurio_fc]

SAME question asked in the instrument forum.      

[Ludmilla · Accepted solution]

Non-VISA Serial Driver is placed at:

http://www.mhst.de/downloads.htm

Pros:

• you don't need to install VISA Runtime on a deployed machine. Place one dll (dll is included) into system folder - that's enough.
• there are several additional functions which VISA doesn't have
• works reliably

Cons:

• works for Serial port only
• uses WinAPI functions