Virtual instrument software architecture (VISA)

This is an unsafe wrapper around the native implementations of Visa from multiple vendors. This wrapper allows for dynamic switching between different visa implementaitons during runtime if needed. This library is kept as close as possible to native implementation so the user will need to use CTypes such as CString, and[u8;x] arrays, cchar, cuchar, cschar, cvoid etc. This library can be use as is or if you prefer a safe simplified abstraction then you can use instrument_communication library which will be published before May 1st 2023.

How to use

To use this library you can load a visa Dynamically linked library .dll or .so etc. There are multiple options to load. rust let visa = visa::create(visa::Binary::Keysight) .unwrap_or(visa::create(visa::Binary::NiVisa)) .unwrap_or(visa::create(visa::Binary::Default)) .unwrap_or(visa::create(visa::Binary::Custom("visa.so".into())))?; then you need to open a default session rust let mut _session = 0; let status = visa.viOpenDefaultRM(&mut _session);

once that's open, you can try connecting to an instrument using its address rust let address = CString::new(format!("TCPIP0::{IPADDRESS}::{PORT}::SOCKET"))?; let mut vi = 0; let status = visa.viOpen(_session, address.as_ptr(), 0, 0, &mut vi);

note a successfully connection will return a status of 0. You can then set the timeout and termination charachter rust visa.viSetAttribute(vi, visa::VI_ATTR_TMO_VALUE, 5000); // Set timeout visa.viSetAttribute(vi, visa::VI_ATTR_TERMCHAR, 10); // set termination byte to 10 visa.viSetAttribute(vi, visa::VI_ATTR_TERMCHAR_EN, 1); // enabled termination byte to stop reading when encountering this character.

define the command string as byte array. rust let cmd = b"*IDN?\n"; initialize return character count rust let mut ret_cnt = 0u32; write command to instrument rust let status=visa.viWrite(vi,cmd.as_ptr(),u32::try_from(cmd.len())?,&mut ret_cnt); status will be 0 if successfull.

Define read buffer size (50 bytes in this case) rust let resp = vec![0u8; 50]; Then read the return message rust let status = visa.viRead(vi, resp.as_ptr() as *mut _, 50, &mut ret_cnt); convert the bytes to a readable text. rust let response = std::str::from_utf8(&resp[0..ret_cnt as usize])?; print it rust println!("Response : {}", response);