Which Type of Instrument Driver Should I Use?
If you have decided to use instrument drivers to program your instruments, you have several kinds of instrument drivers to choose from. The appropriate driver type for your application depends on your application, on availability for your instrument, on the programming language or environment you are using, and on your personal preference.
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This topic addresses only instrument-specific drivers, not general "drivers" like VISA, SICL, and Keysight Technologies (also known as direct I/O APIs or IO Libraries). See the topic Which I/O Library Should I Use? for information on direct I/O APIs in the IO Libraries Suite Help. |
Finding an Instrument Driver for Your Application
You can find Keysight Technologies instrument drivers of many types on the Keysight Technologies Web site (http://www.keysight.com/find/drivers). There are many Web sites with downloadable drivers, so if you don't find what you need on the Keysight Technologies site, you can try a Web search (using a search engine, such as Google) to find other sites.
Choosing Among Available Drivers
For most instruments, several drivers of different types are available. This topic provides a brief overview of instrument driver types.
IVI-COM Drivers
This section contains information specific to the Windows product.
IVI-COM drivers are modern instrument drivers that conform to the specifications defined by the IVI (Interchangeable Virtual Instrument) Foundation.
IVI-COM drivers are implemented as COM (Microsoft Common Object Model) objects, and are therefore optimized and recommended for use in Microsoft Visual Studio. In Visual Studio, you can take full advantage of IntelliSense with IVI-COM drivers, so that you need not consult documentation to find the commands and syntax for driver operations. You can also use IVI-COM drivers in Keysight Technologies VEE. IVI-COM drivers that implement standard instrument-class interfaces provide syntactical interchangeability; this means that you may be able to replace an instrument in your test system with another, similar instrument with few changes or even no changes to your test program, depending on your use of instrument-specific interfaces. You will also find that the IVI-COM programming syntax for different instruments of the same class is very similar, so it is easier to learn to program a new instrument.
IVI-COM drivers are available for most new Keysight Technologies instruments and many of the most popular older Keysight Technologies instruments; most major instrument vendors also provide IVI-COM drivers for their instruments. IVI-COM soft front panel drivers are also available for modular instruments.
Keysight Technologies IO Libraries Suite Keysight Technologies installs version 2.4.1 of the IVI Shared Components (see http://www.ivifoundation.org/) and .NET Framework 2.0 SP2 and .NET Framework 4.6 (if they are not already installed). If you are developing .NET programs, the development environment that you are using must support .NET 2.0 or higher. For example, if you are using Visual Studio, you must use Visual Studio 2005 or higher.
IVI-C Drivers
IVI-C drivers extend the VXIplug&play driver specification (described below). IVI-C drivers have capabilities similar to those of IVI-COM drivers, and also conform to IVI Foundation specifications, but their usage is similar to that of VXIplug&play drivers rather than COM objects. Note that many drivers published as IVI-C drivers were written years ago as VXIplug&play drivers before the IVI specifications were created. A grandfather clause in the IVI specifications allows these drivers to claim IVI compatibility, but they do not conform to the specifications in many ways (such as installation location, registry entries, use of the IVI Configuration Store, and interchangeability via sessions). For practical purposes, such IVI-C drivers can be thought of as enhanced VXIplug&play drivers.
BenchVue Software
This section contains information specific to the Windows product.
BenchVue software is recommended for nonprogrammatic access to instruments. BenchVue software helps you visualize multiple measurements simultaneously; easily capture data, screen shots and system state; and recall a past bench state to replicate results. See http://www.keysight.com/find/benchvue for more information and to download the software.
Easy File Access
This section contains information specific to the Windows product.
Easy File Access is available on many Keysight instruments. It allows PC users and PC applications to view and transfer instrument data files without installing any software drivers on the PC. See your instrument documentation for more information about Easy File Access.
Older Driver Technologies and Proprietary Driver Types
This section contains information specific to the Windows product.
VXIplug&play drivers (also known as Plug&Play or Universal Instrument Drivers) conform to a set of system-level standards produced by the VXIplug&play Systems Alliance. These standards apply to instrument drivers, soft front panels, installation packages, documentation, technical support and application development environments. VXIplug&play drivers are widely used and based on the VISA API; they allow you to develop application programs that are portable across many computer platforms and I/O interfaces. VXIplug&play drivers can be used in C, Visual Basic, Keysight Technologies VEE, and other languages. VXIplug&play drivers are available for most instruments, sources, and switches -- not just for VXIbus instruments.
Many VXIbus instruments have instrument drivers, known as SCPI (or D-SCPI) drivers and I-SCPI drivers, which allow you to control your VXI instruments with SCPI commands like those used for most standalone instruments. You may encounter SCPI and I-SCPI drivers if you are maintaining or extending VXI applications; SCPI drivers are still needed for some new VXI applications. You can find more information and SCPI drivers on the Keysight Technologies Web site (http://www.keysight.com).
Some development environments, like Keysight Technologies VEE and National Instruments LabVIEW, support proprietary driver types in addition to standard types. You can find many VEE Panel Drivers for Keysight Technologies's and other vendors' instruments on the Keysight Technologies Web site (http://www.keysight.com).