The Basics VISA stands for Virtual Instrument Software Architecture. No surprises here. But let’s try to understand what it is and why it’s talked about so much in Test and Measurement circles. To put it simply, VISA is a Test and Measurement (T&M) standard for enabling communication between an application and an instrument. This essentially […]

MATLAB can be used for programming and instrument control, in addition to its typical applications such as signal processing and mathematical calculations. The ability to connect to an instrument from within a script allows a user to extend the processing capabilities of MATLAB directly to data retrieved from an instrument. Similarly, generated or processed data […]

This post describes how to use Visual Studio 2012 to program and control a measurement instrument. Programming language used is C# and we have used the IVI VISA interop library for communication. 1. Start by creating a new project. You can create a Windows Forms Application or a Console Application 2. Add Reference to the […]

Instrument control via any programming language requires commands to be sent out to the instrument from the VISA layer. pyVISA is one such software package that enables Python communication with VISA layer and hence with the instrument, making the job of the programmer relatively more easy. Here are the installation steps required before we talk […]

[NOTE: If you are using Visual Studio 2012, please see the updated post] Visual Studio is one of the most common platforms for programming in various languages including C/C++, C# and VB. This article highlights how C/C++ and C#  can be used for instrument control, should you choose to program in any of these languages. […]