Is Instrument Connectivity the right choice?

With National Instruments instrument control and connectivity solutions, you can automate practically any instrument in your manufacturing floor, laboratory, or industrial application. Automated instrumentation systems take advantage of the latest computer technology, access to network benefits, and specialized functionality of your existing instruments.

Our instrument control and connectivity solutions reflect our firm belief that quality solutions are those that take advantage of technology, provide the needed performance, and protect software investment both today and in the future. Users of National Instruments GPIB products have enjoyed a level of software compatibility unparalleled in the industry. Our NI-488 software architecture, a de facto industry standard, has maintained the same API for more than 18 years. This API empowers you to use NI-488.2 and previous software development efforts to tackle your instrument control challenges of today and tomorrow. With the same principle, we have developed all our instrument control and connectivity solutions to maintain our customers investment in hardware and software, while taking advantage of the latest technologies.

With our instrument driver software, such as NI-VISA and IVI APIs, you can maintain software compatibility at even higher levels. You can use the same code you wrote for a GPIB instrument, with an Ethernet-based version of the same instrument in the future, using NI-VISA. The IVI standard guarantees compatibility between instrument drivers of the same class; for example between oscilloscopes of different manufactures and even different platforms.

Within the different solutions available, you should look at the advantages of the different buses, platforms, and operating systems, and choose the ones that best fit your application needs.