Serial communication in LV71 versus LV61

[oskarbosch]

I have used serial communication extensively in previous version of LV. I noticed that in LV71 (I guess also in LV7) they changed the serial driver to use VISA.

What this means for me right now is:

1/ Have to test a new driver and see how reliable it is.

2/ Will make my installations a lot more complex.

Before I had to just install this one file (serpdrv). Now I have to figure out how to get the smallest installation of NI-VISA to work just for serial port communication. I bet it is not as small as the 25Kb that the serpdrv is. :headbang:

Can anyone comment on their experience with VISA? How reliable is it? How easy is it to make a small installer (not using the LV app-builder) that installs only the serial port part of VISA? Should I just keep using the old serial port driver (seems not to difficult to "hack" this into LV71)?

Anyone with any experience with the new LV71 approach. Also regarding distributing your application. I would appreciate.

Oskar

[JohnRH]

... Can anyone comment on their experience with VISA? How reliable is it? How easy is it to make a small installer (not using the LV app-builder) that installs only the serial port part of VISA? Should I just keep using the old serial port driver (seems not to difficult to "hack" this into LV71)?

Anyone with any experience with the new LV71 approach. Also regarding distributing your application. I would appreciate.

Oskar

2594[/snapback]

If you want truely reliable serial communications, VISA is the way to go! I've used it quite a bit in recent years and now I don't know how I'd ever be able to go back. You have much better lower level control of your serial port, better performance, and really not all THAT much overheard when it comes to building applications. (when compared to available resources today)

However, you are going to probably encounter a problem if you can't use the application builder. This is the only way I know of that let's you build a custom installer that lets you do a minimal install of NI-VISA to let you support serial communications. I think it still won't fit on a floppy, but at least it is much less than the HUGE VISA installer that you download from NI's web site.

All this in mind - I really don't mind the overhead of VISA, since all my programs go on CD's or USB disks anyway. (Althought there are probably still some cases where neither media will work)

Just my $0.02.