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Serial GUI difficulties


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Maybe I'm missing something easy but how does one go about displaying only found and avail serial ports to the user in a nice "user friendly" name like COM1 instead of ASRL1::INSTR.

Thanks in advance.

I did user the;

[ALIASES]

Alias0 = "'LPT1','ASRL10::INSTR'"

Alias1 = "'COM1','ASRL1::INSTR'"

Alias2 = "'COM2','ASRL2::INSTR'"

Alias3 = "'COM3','ASRL3::INSTR'"

Alias4 = "'COM4','ASRL4::INSTR'"

Alias5 = "'COM5','ASRL5::INSTR'"

Alias6 = "'COM6','ASRL6::INSTR'"

Alias7 = "'COM7','ASRL7::INSTR'"

Alias8 = "'COM8','ASRL8::INSTR'"

NumAliases = 9

to get those friendly names but now they're ALL listed to the user when only a couple are really there. My other alternative is to do a polling of the serial ports to see which one is most likely the port with the hardware connected... totally removing the user from the picture :D

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Maybe I'm missing something easy but how does one go about displaying only found and avail serial ports to the user in a nice "user friendly" name like COM1 instead of ASRL1::INSTR.

Thanks in advance.

I did user the;

[ALIASES]

Alias0 = "'LPT1','ASRL10::INSTR'"

Alias1 = "'COM1','ASRL1::INSTR'"

Alias2 = "'COM2','ASRL2::INSTR'"

Alias3 = "'COM3','ASRL3::INSTR'"

Alias4 = "'COM4','ASRL4::INSTR'"

Alias5 = "'COM5','ASRL5::INSTR'"

Alias6 = "'COM6','ASRL6::INSTR'"

Alias7 = "'COM7','ASRL7::INSTR'"

Alias8 = "'COM8','ASRL8::INSTR'"

NumAliases = 9

to get those friendly names but now they're ALL listed to the user when only a couple are really there. My other alternative is to do a polling of the serial ports to see which one is most likely the port with the hardware connected... totally removing the user from the picture :D

The VISA resource name (taken off of the reference output of an Visa Open primative) can be wired to a Instrument property node that gives you all kinds of information about the devices. One of these properties is the Interface Information:Interface Description property which will spit out things like "ASRL1 (COM1 - Communications Port)" or "ASRL10 (LPT1 - ECP Printer Port)" which can be parsed easily for COM1 or LPT1.

If you wire a "VISA Find Resource" with a search query like "ASRL?*INSTR" and wire the output array to a FOR loop, you can iterate through them getting those human read-able names.

Of course, that may not be the easiest way, but it seems to be the least dependant on machine specific things such as aliases.

YMMV,

Joe (orko)

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The VISA resource name (taken off of the reference output of an Visa Open primative) can be wired to a Instrument property node that gives you all kinds of information about the devices. One of these properties is the Interface Information:Interface Description property which will spit out things like "ASRL1 (COM1 - Communications Port)" or "ASRL10 (LPT1 - ECP Printer Port)" which can be parsed easily for COM1 or LPT1.

If you wire a "VISA Find Resource" with a search query like "ASRL?*INSTR" and wire the output array to a FOR loop, you can iterate through them getting those human read-able names.

Of course, that may not be the easiest way, but it seems to be the least dependant on machine specific things such as aliases.

YMMV,

Joe (orko)

Okay, I understand how to do that but I'm still left with trying to display to the user the friendly names as a control for the config serial. Sure I can get the names but how to list them and open the serial port is where I'm stuck.

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Attached is one way to do it with the method I described. It should get you on the right track, but let me know if I missed the mark here.

Download File:post-3266-1140498851.vi

Cheers!

Joe (orko)

:oops: . I didn't know you could wire a string to the resource name terminal of the serial open subvi. :worship:

Can't you use the Measurement & Automation Explorer to set these?

post-2800-1140521614.png?width=400

That's the set up MY system, not the system the compiled program is running on! I have no trouble with the alias names... it's the end users that get confused.

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:oops: . I didn't know you could wire a string to the resource name terminal of the serial open subvi. :worship:

That's the set up MY system, not the system the compiled program is running on! I have no trouble with the alias names... it's the end users that get confused.

What I did once in an application was using the enclosed VI. Use the alias array to initialize the strings of a Ring Control. Then use the selection of the Ring Control to index into the adress string array and pass this to the VISA Open.

Rolf Kalbermatter

Download File:post-349-1140556159.vi

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What I did once in an application was using the enclosed VI. Use the alias array to initialize the strings of a Ring Control. Then use the selection of the Ring Control to index into the adress string array and pass this to the VISA Open.

Rolf Kalbermatter

Thanks Rolf! I didn't think to use both the canonical and the alias names in the indexed array. :D

Nicely simplified example!

Joe (orko)

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Here it is, no guarantee that it works the same in LabVIEW 7.0 though.

Rolf Kalbermatter

It worked just fine on my system under v7.0 when I tried it showing COM1 & COM2.

It show address ASRL1::INSTR for COM1 and a blank for COM2 but that's because my COM2 is tied to a status port on a UPS and was unavailable to respond to the port query.

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  • 3 months later...

I think that the attached VI is still a better implementation, getting the name as the port is known in the OS using the Interface Description property. The property node reports strings like "ASRL19 (COM17 - EdgePort [i40300200-0] Serial Port - 1)" (from a USB serial device) where one can scan for the real port name COM17 instead of COM19. It also lists the ports shared by other computers using VISA Server.

Edit: I disconnected typedefs and included Convert to VISA Rsrc.vi

Download File:post-447-1148580610.vi

Download File:post-447-1148580635.vi

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