National instruments software, National instruments software -7 – National Instruments PXI-8170 Series User Manual

Page 19

Chapter 1

Introduction

1-7

National Instruments Software

National Instruments has developed several software kits that you can use
with the PXI-8170 Series. The software is already installed on your hard
drive.

NI-DAQ has an extensive library of functions that you can call from your
application programming environment. These functions include routines
for analog input (A/D conversion), buffered data acquisition (high-speed
A/D conversion), analog output (D/A conversion), waveform generation,
digital I/O, counter/timer operations, SCXI, RTSI, self-calibration,
messaging, and acquiring data to extended memory.

NI-VISA is the National Instruments implementation of the VISA
specification. VISA is a uniform API for communicating and controlling
Serial, GPIB, PXI, VXI, and various other types of instruments. This API
aids in the creation of more portable applications and instrument drivers.
For information on writing your own PXI instrument driver with NI-VISA,
see the NI-VISA Getting Started manual and the

readme.txt

file in the

NI-VISA

directory.

You can also use the National Instruments LabVIEW and
LabWindows/CVI application programs and instrument drivers to ease
your programming task. These standardized programs match the modular
virtual instrument capability of PXI and can reduce your PXI software
development time. These programs feature extensive libraries of GPIB,
Serial, and VXI instrument drivers written to take full advantage of direct
PXI control. LabVIEW and LabWindows/CVI include all the tools needed
for instrument control, data acquisition, analysis, and presentation.

LabVIEW is a complete programming environment that departs from the
sequential nature of traditional programming languages and features a
graphical programming environment.

LabWindows/CVI is an interactive C development environment for
building test and measurement and instrument control systems. It includes
interactive code-generation tools and a graphical editor for building custom
user interfaces.