LabVIEW
Treiber Problem / ALL-CHEM-MISST II
NI-MAX only can discover NI hardware and a few standard device interfaces such as serial ports.
The USB tutorials mentioned most likely won't help.They assume that you want to access your device with USB Raw which you almost never want to do. Why that, you may ask?
While VISA can access an USB device on low level this requires you to write the entire low level USB protocol on top of VISA USB Raw. Aside that this is a tedious work to do, most devices that use a proprietary protocol do not come with any type of USB protocol description and without such a description the work to write a driver on this level is basically almost impossible.
If the device on the other hand implements a standard USB Protocol such as USB CDC (Communication Device Class) you do not want VISA claim it for itself as it will be automatically picked up by the OS as a serial port and in VISA accordingly available as a serial port device.
Once you have the USB low level driver tackled (either because it installed in your OS as standard serial port or you got the USB protocol implemented on top of VISA USB Raw) you would need to tackle the next level of sending device commands to the device to tell it what to do. These are usually string commands that need to be formatted in a device specific way and they are often documented in a Programmer Reference Manual. The technical information for your device that seems available on the net do not contain any such type of documentation. The only way they seem to want their device to be accessed is through the ready made software they sell through various channels.
Your device also should have a real RS-232 interface that you could connect to the PC. But even there you need the command description of this interface in order to control it and that command description can only be provided by the manufacturer. If they don't want or can't provide that to you there is no possibility to control this device with anything else but the software they sell for it.
Hi Marius,
please ask for a better (programming) manual.
For this price tag you should expect it!
And keep in mind this in an English speaking forum…
It's quite common instruments use USB to implement a virtual COM-port, in which case VISA works very well.
/Y
@Yamaeda wrote:
It's quite common instruments use USB to implement a virtual COM-port, in which case VISA works very well.
The problem for this device is that it seems to be for a very specific market (schools) and many schools do not tend to program their own applications but rather expect more or less ready made solutions. The providers for that industry have a very different approach and often shy away from providing further detailed technical details for various reason. It may be possible to get the information if you know the right people at the manufacturer but it's definitely not available on their website in any way.
The actual instrument manufacturer may not even own the intellectual property for the device or parts of the device such as the communication protocol as it may have been developed by some Engeneering company as part of a semi-public state program for school use.
Not sure about the older device but the new device has specifically a real RS-232 interface according to the datasheet. I suppose there is a chance that they kept most of the RS-232 protocol the same. That it has RS-232 does however not have to mean that the USB interface is using a USB CDC impelementation but it could still be a proprietary interface. To find out is easy: If you plug in this device into a modern computer (Windows 10) and check in the Device Manager, you should see a new device. If it shows up as serial port then it is indeed a USB CDC (Virtual COM Port) device. If it however shows up in Other Devices or similar with a question mark (if the mentioned software hasn't yet been installed) it is using a proprietary USB protocol that requires a device specific device driver for the OS.
