Licence needed also for MAX in sold products?

[seppmuc]

Hello,

I wrote an Application in C# using NI-VISA. This application can handle different measurement devices, which are connected through ethernet to a PC (TCP/IP VISA). I learned through studying the forum, that there is no other way to get external ethernet devices known to VISA (and especially the findresource method) as through using the Measurement and Automation Explorer. If there is another way to be able to use findresources on ethernet devices, please let me know that.

Another important note: I want to include in my application the feature to dynamically find TCP/IP VISA devices on runtime. This is supposed to work also on my costumers PCs. They shouldn't be forced to use MAX first to configure their VISA TCP/IP config, if that is possible.

My question: If I (or the costumers of my product) have a NI-VISA runtime licence and I make a package for selling it to my costumers, is this licence also for MAX or the MAX c# API?

Thanks a lot for your help.

Best regards,

Josef

[Ken_Tobler]

Hi

If the instrument is a VXI-11 instrument it should be found by viFindRsrc provided that it is on the same subnet as the machine.

Then you should have the name of the Instruments to use with the VISA functions.

Regards

Ken

[seppmuc]

Hi Ken,

thanks for your response. As far as I know, viFindRsrc doesn't scan the ethernet for instruments. It relies on a database which has to be built by MAX. But I don't find either this database nor a possibility to build it by my own.

I'm rather confused on this issue.

Best regards,

Josef

[Ken_Tobler]

Hi!

Yes, to use viFindRsrc you have to configure the instrument in MAX and then you can use it to find event your Ethernet Instruments.

If you want to find out the IP of your instruments without MAX, you can try this:

http://digital.ni.com/public.nsf/allkb/0F90ECA67A4EB1368625716C006B1F2E?OpenDocument

And then trying to use:

TCPIP::IPADDRESS::INSTR

Ken

[seppmuc]

Great Idea and information. Thank's a lot.

Now my last problem is, how to perform this UDP broadcast with c# and ni-visa cause I don't have Labview.

I also found out, that I can use

            res = ResourceManager.GetLocalManager();
            mbSession = (MessageBasedSession)res.Open("VICP::192.168.57.100::INSTR");

instead of

             scanResult = res.FindResources("(RSNRP|USB|GPIB|TCPIP)?*INSTR");

cause for a Visa open command, I don't need MAX also.

UDP broadcast? I'll try to find out how to do this with c# and NI-VISA only.

Thanks a lot !!!