Instrument Control Toolbox 2.10

Developing and Modifying Instrument Drivers

Creating and Testing Instrument Drivers

The Instrument Control Toolbox provides a set of graphical tools for creating and testing MATLAB instrument drivers and for working with IVI and VXIplug&play drivers. To work with VXIplug&play and IVI instrument drivers, a MATLAB instrument driver wrapper is required for the underlying driver. You can create these drivers using the provided tools. You can also download preconfigured wrappers and MATLAB instrument drivers from the MATLAB Central file exchange.

The MATLAB Instrument Driver Editor Tool lets you create MATLAB instrument drivers and wrappers for VXIplug&play and IVI instrument drivers. The Instrument Driver Editor Tool also lets you:

• Import existing drivers for editing and modification
• Configure and define instrument-specific properties
• Document properties and functions
• Customize the behavior of your instrument

The MATLAB Instrument Driver Testing Tool provides a graphical environment for creating a test to verify the functionality of a MATLAB instrument driver. It also lets you:

• Verify property behavior
• Verify function behavior
• Save the test as a MATLAB code file
• Export the test results to the MATLAB workspace, a figure window, a MAT-file, or the MATLAB Array Editor
• Save test results as an HTML page

Using TMTool GUI, a Tektronix TDS 2024 driver is imported and then extended to accept multiple coupling types for the main edge trigger.

Adding Analysis Capabilities to Instrument Drivers

The Instrument Control Toolbox lets you modify instrument drivers to call MATLAB analysis functions. As a result, you can configure the instrument to perform tasks that return results as text or numeric data. VXIplug&play, IVI, and MATLAB instrument drivers can be extended to incorporate a single command to the instrument or a sequence of instrument commands. You can also include MATLAB code to determine which commands are sent to the instrument or to perform analysis on data returned from the instrument. For example, you can request that a meter run its self-calibration and return the status as a result. You can also read a meter's scaling, request a measurement, adjust the measured data according to the scale reading, and then return the result.