IVI-COM Instrument Driver

[ScottC.]

Hello all,

I seem to have ventured well out of my field of knowledge here. I was asked to determine if we could control a dc power supply through its ethernet port and assumed it would be fairly easy. The supply is a Magna-Power TS Series III. After doing some digging I couldn't find anything about the protocol used by the supply, but in the user manual it said there was an IVI-COM driver available that included TCP/IP. I found the driver (on the same page as the manual) and had IT put it on the computers I needed it on. 

I'm not familiar with IVI, and was referencing this document for help. At first, I took it to mean that when the driver was installed, it should show up in the Instrument I/o - Inst Drivers palette. When it didn't show up, I downloaded it (as well as the Shared Components) onto a computer I had privileges on and noticed the same thing. That was when I noticed that the manual said the driver was IVI-COM instead of IVI-C, and began looking at that part of the manual. As directed, I dropped the ActiveX Automation Open VI onto a blank VI and browsed for the correct ActiveX class. I was hoping to see the driver name (MPEIVI1.5.0.0) or something close but no go.

So now I'm basically stuck. The manual states that there is documentation and help for the driver, but I haven't been able to find the document online and it doesn't appear we have a disk for it. I would appreciate input from anyone who knows where I should go from here.  

[Jackie_B]

Hi Scott, 

Well it definitely seems like you are on the right track here. Are you able to see the device driver in device manager? Where did you obtain this driver? National Instruments has drivers for Magna-Power TS Series at the following website: http://sine.ni.com/apps/utf8/niid_web_display.model_page?p_model_id=15464. Try to see if downloading a driver from our site helps you interface your device with LabVIEW. Please keep us posted on your progress. 

Regards,

Jackie

[ScottC.]

Jackie,

Thanks for the response. That is where I found the driver originally. The TS series redirects to the Magna-Power website and a driver they have developed.

I can't seem to find the driver in Device Manager, although I may just not be looking for the right thing or in the right place. The power supply is connected to the network, is there something else I need to do to make it visible in MAX?

[ScottC.]

I found the IVI Drivers tree in MAX, but I'm not sure where to go next. On the software tab, I was able to find the MPEIVI driver in the Software Module drop-down. So it looks like I just need some more info on how the rest of the settings should be configured for this application.

[ScottC.]

Sorry for the rapid fire updates, but I played around some more and now I found the IVI MPEIVI Object in the "Select ActiveX Class" Menu. I'm not sure which of the two objects (MPEIVI or MPEIVIOutput) I need but I'll keep going and update as necessary. 

[ScottC.]

The dc power supplies are configured with DHCP. They have static IPs set through the network, so I got the DNS names to communicate with them. My question is, from this information how do I set the Resource Name in MAX and as an imput to the IVI driver invoke nodes? I tried just using TCPIP::dns name to no avail.

Thanks.