LabVIEW Interface for Arduino Documents
I had issues running it on the Mac as well. It turns out that the problem is the Init.vi will never find the Arduino correctly on Mac because Instrument Name returned does not have the text "Arduino" in it. See image below:
The solution is to just wire the visa resource constant to the input of the Init.vi:
One possible solution that NI can implement is to wrap the checking code into a conditional disable structure so it does not run on the Mac OS. But instead returns a different error code if the Visa Resource terminal is left unwired on the Mac platform. It would be nice however, if it just worked for new users, but I don't see a way around this.
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Michael - vishots.com
Hi,
thank you for having confirmed that it works on Mac 
I noticed, by debugging, the problem of text "Ardiuno"
but, in fact, I had a problem with the installation of Labview 2010 and NI-VISA especially: no way to save the configuration of "NI-VISA Configuration" : file locked 
So, I deinstalled manually everything ( there were still some configurations Labview 7! )
and I reinstalled everything and NI-VISA and now, it works 
I finally see with the application "NI-VISA Configuration", the combination of a "ASRLx:: INSTR" (VISA ressource) and a real device (/dev/cu.usbmodemXYZ) used by Arduino...
thanks
jmb
Ben and Sam,
I'm using the Arduino Uno, and here is a screenshot of the compile error codes:
Regards,
Gil
Ron,
As well put together as the toolkit is, sometimes it is hard to ensure we cover every possible question in the documentation. Luckily, for things like the autodetection feature, everything is open source down to the VISA calls so understanding why something does or does not work in the toolkit as expected is as easy as double clicking on the VI in question or opening the firmware. To explore the interesting situation of why why Auto detect, let's open up Init.vi. We can do this by double clicking on the VI to see the front panel of Init.vi and going to Window>> Show Block Diagram to see what's going on behind the scenes...
How Auto Detect works:
When we open up the block diagram the first VI we notice is the Auto Detect VI (convenient, right?):
When we open up this Auto Detect VI we see that the first thing we do is to see if the VISA Resource Control is empty. That is to say if there is a VISA resource chosen, do not autodetect, just wire through the chosen VISA resource. Next we use the VISA Find Resource to find all VISA items that are Serial Items with the command "ASRL?*::INSTR". To see what that list returns we can either right click on it's output and create an indicator or we can see what MAX shows:
In MAX we see a number of serial ports available:
COM1: Computer's Built-In Serial port
COM6: Arduino Mega 2560
COM7: Though listed as a USB Serial Port, this is how a Arduino Duemilanove (2009) shows up in MAX due to the FTDI chip on the Arduino Duemilanove that handles the USB to serial conversion.
COM15: Arduino UNO. This is the recommended and fully tested Arduino.
COM16&17: This is how a serial-over-bluetooth connection appears to MAX. It shows up as two serial connections. This would be how you could connect to a bluetooth Arduino or compatible bluetooth connection.
Why the Auto Detect does not work for all Arduinos:
The next part of the Auto Detect VI checks all serial instruments for the Interface Name. As you can see in the second picture, sometimes an Arduino does not appear with an Interface Name including the actual word "Arduino." As an example, you can see COM7 does not say "Arduino Duemilanove" and this is why it does not work with Auto Detect. As the developers, we wanted to add the functionality of Auto Detect but did not put together a way to detect every flavor of Arduino. We could, however, add the functionality for any Arduino's that readily identified themselves as such. With any other kind of Arduino, such as one connected through XBee, Bluetooth, any Arduino earlier than UNO, or any Arduino-compatible boards, the programmer has to manually choose which VISA resource in the input of the Init.vi in order for the connection to be successfully established.
nanoT, I also noticed you had a Arduino-compatible DFduino MEGA1280. Any board that follows the protocols of the Arduino, can be programmed with the Arduino IDE, and enumerates as a serial resource in MAX should theoretically be compatible with the Arduino toolkit but unfortunately we have not been able to test every different wonderful flavor of Arduinos out there. We do not have the resources to test them all but we would LOVE to hear any success stories using any Arduinos outside the recommended set. We love the variety, the ambition, and look forward to seeing your awesome projects.
Rock,
Ben
