C VISA Example

This is a simple "Hello world!" project for instrument control using C and the VISA library. Using this project as a starting point, you should be able to:

• Connect to an instrument
• Write a SCPI command to an instrument
• Read a SCPI command response from an instrument
• Close the instrument connection

VISA

VISA must be installed on your system, and R&S VISA is specifically recommended. It is available for free for many platforms from here:

R&S VISA

Visual Studio 2015

The Visual Studio 2015 c-visa-example project should compile and run as-is on a 64-bit system. This project contains a copy of the headers and libraries that you need to compile the project. These are:

• visa\include\visa.h
• visa\include\visatype.h
• visa\lib\visa.lib

This is for convenience for the purposes of this tutorial, but it is not a best practice. In general, it is better to use the include and lib locations from your VISA installation so that you automatically include a current and compatible version.

For a 64-bit system, you can (usually) find these files at:

C:\Program Files\IVI Foundation\VISA\Win64\Include\

and

C:\Program Files\IVI Foundation\VISA\Win64\Lib_x64\msc\

MacOS

Note:

c-visa-example for MacOS is a work in progress. Specifically, the make file needs to be completed and the relevant libraries either included or pointed to.

This project uses make and clang, which are typically already included with a mac.

To build, navigate into the project directory and type:

# build
make

# run
./example