About Subordinate Instruments
Some hardware configurations may consist of a primary instrument and one or more secondary, or subordinate, instruments (e.g., N9041-EDC UXA). When the VSA software discovers configurations with subordinate instruments, it protects those instruments from potential conflicts by making them unavailable for use in other configurations until they are no longer discovered as subordinate.
The VSA scans for connected instruments during the Hardware Discovery process and looks for instances of instruments that are in use by other instruments. In the following example, the VSA detects through matching of instrument model and serial number that a Keysight MSOS804A Infiniium oscilloscope is being used by an N9041B UXA via local USB connection. The same MSOS804A Infiniium scope is also discovered via TCPIP LAN Local Area Network: A communications network that serves users within a local geographical area, typically over distances of around 100m. Wireless LANs use wireless communicaitons to network devices so there is no need for data cabling. connection and is listed in the last line of the log as "In use by other hardware."
When the discovery process is finished, the Discovered Instruments tab will display all detected subordinate instruments in the "Instruments unavailable because in use by other instrument" area. Any instruments listed in this area will not be available for use in other configurations until they are no longer detected as subordinate after performing a Rediscover Instruments.
Subordinate instruments are also displayed in the Properties panel of the Configurations tab when a configuration has a subordinate instrument:
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