Virtual Instrument Standard Architecture (VISA) is a standard defined by Keysight™ (formerly Agilent Technologies®) and National Instruments™ for communicating with instruments regardless of the interface.
The Instrument Control Toolbox™ software supports the GPIB, VXI, GPIB-VXI, TCP/IP using VXI-11, TCP/IP using HiSLIP, USB, RSIB, and serial port interfaces using the VISA standard. Communication is established through a VISA instrument object, which you create in the MATLAB® workspace. For example, a VISA-GPIB object allows you to use the VISA standard to communicate with an instrument that possesses a GPIB interface.
Note
Most features associated with VISA instrument objects are identical to the features associated with GPIB and serial port objects. Therefore, this chapter presents only interface-specific functions and properties. For example, register-based communication is discussed for VISA-VXI objects, but message-based communication is not discussed as this topic is covered elsewhere in this guide.
For many VISA applications, you can communicate with your instrument without detailed knowledge of how the interface works. In this case, you might want to begin with one of these topics:
If you want a high-level description of all the steps you are likely to take when communicating with your instrument, refer to the Getting Started documentation, linked to at the top of the Instrument Control Toolbox Doc Center page.
When you use instrhwinfo
to find commands to configure the interface
objects, you must use valid vendor or resource names. The supported values for
vendor
are given below.
Vendor | Description |
---|---|
|
Agilent Technologies VISA. Note that this vendor name has been
replaced by |
keysight | Keysight VISA |
rs | Rohde & Schwarz R&S VISA |
| National Instruments VISA |
| Tektronix® VISA (see note below for 64-bit support) |
Note
For 64-bit Tektronix VISA support, it is important to note the following if you have a multi-vendor VISA installation (e.g., you have installed drivers from Tektronix and another vendor such as Keysight). If you are using 64-bit Tektronix VISA on a machine with VISA implementations from multiple vendors, it is required that Tektronix VISA be configured as the primary VISA for it to be usable with Instrument Control Toolbox. Most 64-bit VISA implementations include a utility that allows you to select the primary and preferred VISA implementations. Use the VISA utility to set Tektronix VISA to be the primary VISA implementation on your machine. This step can be accomplished at any time, regardless of the order of installation of the VISA drivers.
The format for rsrc name
is given below for the supported VISA
interfaces. The values indicated by brackets are optional. You can
use the instrument's VISA Alias
for rsrcname
.
Interface | Resource Name |
---|---|
GPIB | GPIB[board]::primary_address[::secondary_address]::INSTR |
GPIB-VXI | GPIB-VXI[chassis]::VXI_logical_address::INSTR |
RSIB | RSIB::remote_host::INSTR (provided by NI VISA only) |
Serial | ASRL[port_number]::INSTR |
TCPIP (VXI-11) | TCPIP[board]::remote_host[::inst0]::INSTR |
TCPIP (HiSLIP) | TCPIP[board]::remote_host[::hislip0]::INSTR |
USB | USB[board]::manid::model_code::serial_No[::interface_No]::INSTR |
VXI | VXI[chassis]::VXI_logical_address::INSTR |
The rsrcname
parameters are described below.
Parameter | Description |
---|---|
| Board index (optional — defaults to 0) |
| VXI chassis index (optional — defaults to 0) |
| USB interface |
| Local Area Network (LAN) device name (optional — defaults to inst0) |
| Manufacturer ID of the USB instrument |
| Model code for the USB instrument |
| Serial port number (optional — defaults to 1) |
| Primary address of the GPIB instrument |
| Host name or IP address of the instrument |
| Secondary address of the GPIB instrument (optional — defaults to 0) |
| Index of the instrument on the USB hub |
| Logical address of the VXI instrument |
obj = visa('
creates
the VISA object with the specified property names and property values.
If an invalid property name or property value is specified, an error
is returned and the VISA object is not created.vendor
','rsrcname','PropertyName
',PropertyValue,...)