USB/GPIB to Ethernet Switch Interface?

[Alex.Pinion]

I am fabricating a test setup with LabWindows.  I want to take a bunch of instruments, such as: multimeters, oscope, power supplies, mcu can bus board etc. and merge them into one big interface that outputs ethernet to a computer with LabWindows.  Then, I would like to make drivers (or something else?) that can ping each instrument and read/write to it accordingly in the test procedure I develop.  The idea was to clean things up and provide more bandwidth over the ethernet, opposed to using a million usb's for everything.  I don't know if the ethernet interface idea would be the best option, but it was a thought. 

I was wondering if anyone else has had any experience with this sort of thing?  If so, what kind of instrumentation was used? And, what kind of general things did you have to accommodate for when making your LabWindows application (drivers, ini files, configuration stuff etc.)?

Thanks,

Alex

[David22JRA]

Hello Alex.Pinion

I am wondering if all devices has GPIB, if do not, what interface does each one use?

If all of those use GPIB you can consider the GPIB-ENET/1000 (http://www.ni.com/en-us/support/model.gpib-enet-1000.html)

http://www.ni.com/pdf/manuals/370426n.pdf

I hope this information might be useful

Regards

[Alex.Pinion]

One device will for sure have USB, but 3-5 other instruments should have GPIB.  Thanks for the response, I will look into this unit.

[David22JRA]

Hello Alex.Pinion

Sure, probably you can use all other devices in that device I told you and the other in a USB port.

Regards

[mkossmann]

For the USB devices you might have a look at  a network attached USB Hub. But I would ask the manufaturer if he expects your devices to work with it.

[David22JRA]

Hi

Yes, confirm that.

Regards