

It specifies the instrument interface type, the instrument address, and the VISA Session type. The VISA Resource Name is the exact name of the VISA resource. VISA Resource Name (Instrument Descriptor) There are several types: INSTR, SOCKET, RAW, etc. The VISA resource type will depend on your instrument. The resource is a complete description of the set of capabilities for the instrument. If you have multiple instruments connected to one host, each instrument is considered a VISA resource. The most used functionality for instrumentation is provided in a compact command set, eliminating the need to learn low level communication protocols for multiple interface types.īefore you start using NI-VISA, it is helpful to learn some of the terminology commonly used throughout the development process.Ī VISA resource is any instrument in your system. It provides an API that has bus-independent functions for most of its I/O functionality. NI-VISA is an extremely easy interface to learn.

NI-VISA supports several operating systems, including Windows OS versions, MacOS versions, and Linux distributions. Therefore, a VISA application written in LabVIEW can be easily ported to any platform that supports LabVIEW. This ensures your application performs consistently across different platforms. VISA does this by defining its own data types. NI-VISA is designed so that programs written using VISA function calls can move from one platform to another. For example, the VISA command to write an ASCII string to a message-based instrument is the same whether the instrument interface is serial, GPIB, or USB. This makes it easy to switch interfaces and provides a single language to learn for multiple different instruments. NI-VISA uses many of the same operations to communicate with instruments, regardless of the interface type. NI-VISA is recommended because of the following three advantages.
