From VTI Instruments Corporation
The terminology and acronyms within the test and measurement software community can be overwhelming at first glance. For example, how do VXIplug&play, SCPI, CVI, LabVIEW, HP VEE, VISA, GUI and IVI relate to one another? What does an instrument driver do? How does it differ from a VXIplug&play driver? Does it matter anymore whether a VXIbus device is register or message-based? This technical note is intended to provide answers to these questions and more as they relate to communicating with VXIbus instruments.
In our analogy, our desktop office device to control is a laser printer, and our VXIbus instrument is a VM2616 waveform digitizer. A user isn't typically given access to the low-level commands for the printer. They are provided with a software driver (graphical user interface or GUI) with their application, MSWord in this example, which provides control over the primary functions (e.g. paper orientation or color). The GUI interfaces with the printer specific hardware driver supplied by the manufacturer (Fig. 2). In the VXIbus instrumentation world, manufacturers will supply a standalone GUI application referred to as soft front panel (Fig. 3). The soft front panel is an application that is developed by a manufacturer that interfaces to their software driver to give very high-level and easy access to instrument functions by imitating the look and feel of a box instrument.
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