References for writing a driver for an rs232 device?

[Tim]

I wrote a standalone app for a device and many customers are asking for
LabVIEW interaction.

I assume this means I have to write a driver of some sort. The NI site
looks impressive, but the volume of material is absolutely overwhelming ans
I have not figured out exactly what I need to do.

Can someone point me to some reference material for what I need?

I want to isolate the user from having to encode communications to the
device and from parsing the results.

Thanks
Tim

[Freelance Embedded Systems Engineer]

Post by Tim
I wrote a standalone app for a device and many customers are asking for
LabVIEW interaction.
I assume this means I have to write a driver of some sort. The NI site
looks impressive, but the volume of material is absolutely overwhelming ans
I have not figured out exactly what I need to do.
Can someone point me to some reference material for what I need?
I want to isolate the user from having to encode communications to the
device and from parsing the results.
Thanks Tim

You have a couple of options. To name a few: Port your interface to an existing standard already supported by NI, like GPIB or VISA. Or just provide a DLL and document the API and let the Labview user use the Labview DLL interface.

http://zone.ni.com/devzone/cda/tut/p/id/4049
http://www.ni.com/support/visa/default.htm
http://www.ni.com/support/visa/vintro.pdf

http://ftp.icpdas.com/pub/cd/iocard/pci/napdos/pci/manual/calling_dll_functions_in_labview.pdf
http://www.fz-juelich.de/zel/datapool/page/160/WritingDLL_LabView.pdf

[Scott Seidman]

Post by Freelance Embedded Systems Engineer
You have a couple of options. To name a few: Port your interface to
an existing standard already supported by NI, like GPIB or VISA. Or
just provide a DLL and document the API and let the Labview user use
the Labview DLL interface.

Is there something particularly wrong with just writing a vi with the
appropriate serial port stuff in it? It's no less supported than GPIB!

[Freelance Embedded Systems Engineer]

Post by Scott Seidman

Post by Freelance Embedded Systems Engineer
You have a couple of options. To name a few: Port your interface to
an existing standard already supported by NI, like GPIB or VISA. Or
just provide a DLL and document the API and let the Labview user use
the Labview DLL interface.

Is there something particularly wrong with just writing a vi with the
appropriate serial port stuff in it? It's no less supported than GPIB!

Post by Freelance Embedded Systems Engineer

Post by Tim
I want to isolate the user from having to encode communications to the
device and from parsing the results.

[Scott Seidman]

Post by Tim
I want to isolate the user from having to encode communications to
the device and from parsing the results.

Isolating the user hardly means that it shouldn't be done in a vi-- just
that the user shouldn't know what's being done in the vi.

[Freelance Embedded Systems Engineer]

Post by Scott Seidman

Post by Tim
I want to isolate the user from having to encode communications to
the device and from parsing the results.

Isolating the user hardly means that it shouldn't be done in a vi-- just
that the user shouldn't know what's being done in the vi.

Sure, I agree, if he was coding in Labview then he could provide his own VI that handles all of the encoding. But I got the impression that the original poster doesn't have and doesn't use Labview and was looking for a means to provide an interface so that Labview users could use the serial device that he supports.