NI Max cannot find device despite successful communication using terminal

[matter1010]

I am certain it is RS-232. A number of other instruments are connected on the GPIB bus. They are not shown as they were turned off when I took the screenshot, but I can communicate with them through LabVIEW. 

If I could connect the device I'm having trouble with to the GPIB bus I would, but the only connection it has is RS-232. 

[Blokk]

• Did you install the driver for this USB-to-RS232 adapter? Is it compatible with Mac?
• After installing the driver (no idea about the procedure for a mac, but you need this in case of Windows) did a new COM port appear in the device manager of your OS?
• Did you try another USB-to-RS232 adapter just to be sure your model is not defected? Usually people recommend adapters using FTDI chip, they say it is more reliable...

Edit: sorry, i did not read the whole 1st post. I see now you can communicate via this adapter using terminal window... Could you try to run the following code snippet, and show here what is the output (when your device and adapter is connected in the usb slot):

edit2: it should just give the same list as MAX, but if MAX is defect, this list might show more ports...

[matter1010]

I could try to reinstall the drivers, although the computer does recognize the device when I run ls /dev/tty.* to look for usb connections. I don't think the drivers shipped with the cable are the latest ones, so perhaps that is the issue. 

Running the code you mentioned gives: 

If I run it again with the device turned off I get: 

[Blokk]

You wrote that you can communicate with the instrument via "terminal commands" using this USB-RS232 adapter. Could you write here the exact commands and how you specified the serial port?

Edit: also, could you try to the "visaconf" to add "manually" the required serial port to your system? See more here:

http://www.ni.com/tutorial/4361/en/

[matter1010]

Sure, I found the port using

ls /dev/tty.*

This returns the two addresses I have:

/dev/tty.Bluetooth-Incoming-Port /dev/tty.usbserial-A104D7YA

From here I run the command 

screen /dev/tty.usbserial-A104D7YA 4800

Screen sets the terminal to commincate on a serial port, with the second argument an address and the third the baud rate. Running this command sets the terminal to communicate with the port, from which I can send and receive information from the device (these two commands TC and STATE query the temperature and status of the device, respectively): 

I had tried using VISA configuration to set a static device. However, when I try to save any of the settings I get this error: 

The visaconf.ini and nivisa.ini files do not exist on my computer, and since I have a mac I don't believe they're supposed to. The only reference I could find googling the issue was this one, which seems to imply it's a bug with the Mac version that doesn't have a solution at the moment. 

[natasftw]

With it on, I'm seeing ASRL6 rather than ASRL7.  Have we run the code looking for ASRL6 instead to see if that works?

Have we tried to copy/paste the long USB value to see if that provides anything different (I'd expect this to not be successful)

[matter1010]

I've tried it with both of the adjacent numbers (so ASRL5, ASRL6, and ASRL7), as well as pasting the USB value into the VISA resource name. 

[Blokk]

I would try to reinstall VISA, lets see if that helps...

[matter1010]

I've gotten the latest drivers for the RS-232-USB cable installed and MAX still doesn't recognize the instrument, so I'm certain that isn't the issue.

If I need to go through the process of getting permission to reinstall any of the LabVIEW software I think it would be more convenient just to use the terminal to run it. Thank you for the help in troubleshooting.