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USB Device Not Recognized by NI VISA (ERROR-1073807174)

Hello!

 

I am working on a LabVIEW program which reads and parses data from a scale. The USB device I'm working with is from Arlyn Scales, and is linked here: https://shop.arlynscales.com/platform-scales-with-industrial-technology-aluminum/?setCurrencyId=1&gc...

 

I was getting timeout errors when I tried to run my program with VISA commands (Open, Read, and Close). After searching through some tutorials, I came up with this program (replacing VISA Open with a Serial command) which gives me no errors, but the scale data does not show up on the indicator.

 

labview3.png

Some troubleshooting led me to the NI VISA Driver Wizard via this help forum: https://knowledge.ni.com/KnowledgeArticleDetails?id=kA03q000000x1qzCAA&l=en-US

I tried to follow the instructions to Create INF File (USB driver), but I got stuck at step 5 after selecting my instrument and clicking "next." I was given ERROR 1073807174 unexpected USB_STRING_DESCRIPTOR as shown below.

 

Untitled2.png

I do not know where to go from here. I have tried changing the iSerialNumber value of the device using a PSoC creator, but that did not resolve the issue. This device does this on multiple desktops. (Note: If you run the attached program, do not pay attention to the lower part on the block diagram with saves data to an Excel sheet. After starting, click "cancel" and then "do not save.")

 

Any help is very appreciated.

 

Thank you!

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Deinstall that VISA USB driver immediately! It is not magically doing what you hope it would do. If you use this method, you need to implement the low level USB protocol all on your own and that is only possible if you have the full protocol specification from the manufacturer. Most manufacturers will NOT give you that specification simply because they could not support users trying to use it. Any technical person who would be able to support such customers will never get hired to work in technical support but instead wll be hired to write their device firmware instead!

Technically the VISA USB Raw mode is only an option for someone trying to communicate with an USB device that (s)he has developed themselves and where (s)he understands the USB protocol involved down to the last bit and byte of it. Factually it is not a good option on most modern OSes anymore as you need to have a valid signing certificate to sign your driver in order to install the VISA USB Raw device driver inf file on a normal user computer.

 

You mention having used the Serial Port Init function before and you even show it in your pictures. What was the problem with that? The ominous "-1073807339 (0xbfff0015) Timeout Expired Before Operation Completed"?

 

That would be not very surprising. You try to read from the device without it being primed to do so, Most devices will not simply chat into the void but prefer to be sent a specific command first before answering to that. Balances often can be set into chatty mode where they will continously spew out data everytime the measurement has settled or sometimes every so many seconds but you need to configure it specifically for that first, either through its own panel or through commands you send to it. What commands that would be you ask? You need to contact the manufacturer. They need to provide you with a protocol description for their (virtual) RS-232 port on their device.

 

According to this page, your device is more advanced (not surprising for someone claiming to manufacturer industrial scales rather than cheap toys). Instead of some crude ASCII commands it actually seems to support a Modbus protocol on its virtual RS-232 port. That is promising, although not exactly going to be plug and play but more like plug and work hard. NI has Modbus VI libraries available that you can use to talk to such a device. You can install them directly from VIPM. But first you need to get rid of that VISA USB Raw driver that you installed in your ignorance.

Rolf Kalbermatter
My Blog
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Thank you for your quick response. I am working with LabVIEW 2014 and receive this error message when I try to download the Modbus library from the link you've provided: VIPM could not download the package ni_lib_modbus_library-1.2.1.42 because the package was built in VIPM 2017, which is newer and incompatible with the current version. I did some searching to see if there was an earlier version I could try, but I can only find the 2021 versions.

 

VIMP2017.png

Thank you for your help.

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The knowledge article I posted a link to, has download files in there that are earlier versions of the NI Modbus library. According to the page they should work down to LabVIEW 2012.

Rolf Kalbermatter
My Blog
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