2007/09/20

ni-visa command tree

The oscilloscope that I have to test the tango device server is a Tektronix DPO7245. This is a really powerful instrument who is able to calculate everything that I need in this development loop level. The only problem that I have is the documentation about TekVisa running under Gnu/Linux.

From the device server side, it have available the National Instruments library; and inside the instrument they put their Tektronix implementation. Ok, so far so good? No, the important point is visa is a way to do an abstraction of the GPIB commands and with it you can forget in the code if you are writing for a networked connection or under a gpib connector, then you need to know the GPIB commands. But where are the command tree for this oscilloscope series? Mmm... No where because the manufacturer does not provide this list in the TekVisa Programmer Manual! In this manual you only can find some minimal samples, and still worse some of this samples does not work with the linux implementation library!

After many unfruitful search time on Google my was close to the desperations... No one, and no where, is this command tree? Yes! Some one has made something for the 4000 series!

Now I have some reference to work. Some commands could change (because this standard is not much standard and the manufacturers implements some differences, even between the same manufacturer models!). With this, only one day is being enough to implement almost everything in this device server!

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