National Instruments NI-VISA back-end

The National Instruments NI-VISA library and the associated GPIB drivers are widely used and proven code for accessing lab devices, and our clear recommendation for controlling lab devices under Microsoft Windows. For the respective downloads, please follow the provided links. Linux support is available, however, installation can be complicated, and there is no support for USB-GPIB adaptors under Linux. A lot of tips and tricks can be found at the NI Linux User Forum.

In general, National Instruments offers excellent documentation. We especially recommend the NI-VISA User Manual, the NI-VISA Programmer Reference Manual these references of VISA resource names and VISA error codes.

For using the NI VISA library, you will have to install our separate Perl package Lab::VISA providing the Perl language bindings. Detailed installation instructions are provided in that package.

Linux-GPIB back-end

The Linux-GPIB project aims at providing free and open-source hardware drivers and a GPIB library with an API compatible to the NI drivers (without VISA). The package code is considered stable and feature-complete; new releases occur mainly as response to changes in the kernel driver interface.

Installing Linux-GPIB

Note that on Gentoo Linux-GPIB is packaged. On distros where this is not the case, you can use the following steps. For more details, consult Linux-GPIB's INSTALL file. This guide was tested on Debian 8 with Linux-GPIB versions 4.0.2 and 4.0.3 .

• Install the kernel headers, cpanm, gcc and make. On Debian you can run this command:

   root # apt-get install linux-headers-`uname -r` build-essential cpanminus 

• Download the Linux-GPIB sources and build with the usual procedure:

   user $ tar -xf linux-gpib-4.0.2.tar.gz && cd linux-gpib-4.0.2
   user $ ./configure
   user $ make

  install the library and kernel drivers:

   root # make install

• Add your user to the gpib group.

   root # adduser user gpib 

• Install the Perl bindings:

   root # cpanm ./language/perl

Example Configuration for the GPIB-USB-HS controller

NI's GPIB-USB-HS is supported out of the box by Linux-GPIB without any additional proprietary firmware.

You need a configuration file /etc/gpib.conf:

 interface {
        minor = 0       /* board index, minor = 0 uses /dev/gpib0, minor = 1 uses /dev/gpib1, etc. */
        board_type = "ni_usb_b" /* type of interface board being used */
        pad = 0 /* primary address of interface             */
        sad = 0 /* secondary address of interface           */
        timeout = T3s   /* timeout for commands */

        eos = 0x0a      /* EOS Byte, 0xa is newline and 0xd is carriage return */
        set-reos = yes  /* Terminate read if EOS */
        set-bin = no    /* Compare EOS 8-bit */
        set-xeos = no   /* Assert EOI whenever EOS byte is sent */
        set-eot = yes   /* Assert EOI with last byte on writes */

 /* settings for boards that lack plug-n-play capability */
        base = 0        /* Base io ADDRESS                  */
        irq  = 0        /* Interrupt request level */
        dma  = 0        /* DMA channel (zero disables)      */


        master = yes    /* interface board is system controller */
 }

To load the kernel driver during boot, add ni_usb_gpib to /etc/modules.

After connecting the controller via usb, you will still have to run gpib_config as root. To automate this, create an udev rule /etc/udev/rules.d/98-gpib-more.rules with contents:

 SUBSYSTEMS=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="3923", ATTRS{idProduct}=="709b" ACTION=="add", RUN+="/usr/bin/logger Configured NI USB-GPIB-HS" RUN+="/etc/hotplug/usb/ni_usb_gpib"

Now, you can use the interactive ibtest and ibterm programs to test the installation.