Lior Bilia

One more thing: Vendor lock in, software subscriptions and proprietary drivers - Some high end vector signal generators by NI require subscription, in addition to their high initial cost. These instruments do not have standard SCPI (or IVI) drivers. Similarly, their new PXIe DMM, the 4080 has proprietary drivers, vs standard IVI drivers for previous models. If NI decides to drop support for this instrument, you are out of luck.

Skip the PXI DMM, FG and scope cards, they are expensive and usually do not perform as well as standard instruments. Instead pick whatever instrument fits your requirement with a modern interface (LXI, USB) and a rack kit. Example Keysight 33465A vs NI PXI DMM. The NI card is ~4000USD, with slightly worse performance. Definitely use the PXI for massive multiplexers, DAQs, Digital interfaces (CAN, I2C etc) and GPIO. Also, take into account that PXI is being phased out in favor of PXIe. Some of NI PXI muxes are EOL, without an alternative.

Try the EEVblog They have a Sell/Buy section.

Do you get a reply to *IDN? in NI MAX? Do you send a CH n command? Does it work when you use the Ethernet interface?

As far as I know, a .NET dll in LV is loaded on the 1st call to one of its functions, usually a constructor.

Why does the python code has 2 different constants?

Is this a controlled restart of the PC or hard power cycle? Corrupted files can be the result of such power cycles, and your only solution in such case is to revert to a known good file that was not opened during the power cycle.

There are some computer vision libraries out there (OpenCV, Emgu, AForge etc.) that make capturing a camera feed easy.

I think each instrument will have its own drivers and API. There is no interface standard or even a drive to have one in this field. CAN, Modbus, GPIB and other standards exist because there was an effort by many different companies to have this interoperability. These days, each company is trying to lock you into its own ecosystem.

You don't own anything anymore. Why aren't you happy about it?

It's in the error message - Waveform might be too small. Probably there is an overhead required for transitioning to the next waveform.

When I was using TS, I let it do all the drudgery - Report, limits, configuration management, database etc. I used LV to do the tests. I had a test template with a basic state machine for the tests (Initialize, Measure, Report), This way other engineers could generate tests and match the style guidelines.