Instrument Control Toolbox

The Interface Driver Adaptor

The interface driver adaptor (or just adaptor) is the link between the toolbox and the interface driver. The adaptor's main purpose is to pass information between MATLAB and the interface driver. Interface drivers are provided by your instrument vendor. For example, if you are communicating with an instrument using a National Instruments GPIB controller, then an interface driver such as NI-488.2 must be installed on your platform. Note that interface drivers are not installed as part of the Instrument Control Toolbox.

The Instrument Control Toolbox provides adaptors for the GPIB interface and the VISA standard. The serial port interface does not require an adaptor. The supported interfaces and the adaptor names are listed below.

Table 1-1: Supported Interfaces and Adaptor Names

Interface	Adaptor Name
GPIB	agilent, cbi, cec, iotech, keithley, ni
VISA standard	agilent, ni
Serial port	N/A

Note    The Instrument Control Toolbox does not directly support TCP/IP communication, but MATLAB has the capability for doing this. Refer to Example: Reading a URL in the Help browser to learn how you might use MATLAB to communicate with your instrument via TCP/IP.

As described in Examining Your Hardware Resources, you can list the supported interfaces and adaptor names with the instrhwinfo function. For a list of vendor driver requirements and limitations, refer to "Instrument Control Toolbox 1.0" in the Release Notes.

M-File Functions

Communicating with Your Instrument