README for Lab::VISA
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This library offers a perl interface to National Instrument's NI-VISA library.

With this library you can easily control the instruments in your lab (multimeters, voltage
sources, magnet sources, pulse generators etc.) with Perl. You can perform
complicated measurement jobs with just some Perl loops.

Even better: The general L<Lab::Instrument|Lab::Instrument> class reduces the
communication overhead to minimal C<read>, C<write> and C<query> methods.
On top of this, there are specialized instrument classes (virtual instruments) such as
L<Lab::Instrument::HP34401A|Lab::Instrument::HP34401A>, that offer
even more high level comfort with methods such as C<read_voltage>.

The L<Lab::Tools|Lab::Tools> package offers classes to simplify the task
of logging data to disk and maintaining this data.


INSTALLATION
------------

This library has been tested to work on Linux and Windows.

Before you start, you must have the VISA library by National Instrument
installed. If you plan to use GPIB connections (which is very likely), you must also
have the necessary drivers (NI-488.2) for your GPIB adapter card installed. Refer to the good
documentation by National Instrument to find out, how to install these packages.

See National Instrument's website at

 http://digital.ni.com/softlib.nsf/webcategories/85256410006C055586256BBB002C0E91?opendocument&node=132060_US

 http://ni.com/linux/ni488dl.htm


BUILDING
--------

If you want to build the module yourself, you will need a compiler and a make program.
On Windows the make program is called 'nmake', so replace the 'make' command in the
instructions below with 'nmake'. I successfully used the freely available Visual C++ 2005
on Windows.

If you also want to re-generate the wrapper code from the Swig description file (visa.i),
you must have Swig installed. Uncomment the swig line in the Makefile.PL to run swig.

To build and install this module, type the following commands. Windows users replace
'make' by 'nmake'.

   perl Makefile.PL
   make
   make install

In case the compiler or linker cannot find certain include files (e.g. visa.h) or libraries,
adjust the platform specific lines in Makefile.PL where indicated. They are currently set
to match my local setup. Don't know if these things could ever be found automatically.

IMPORTANT NOTE: The swig-based wrapper code does NOT compile with plain perl 5.8.8. No swig code does, due
to a bug in this perl release. In order to make it work, either use another version of
perl or apply the patch described in this message and recompile your perl:

http://www.xray.mpe.mpg.de/mailing-lists/perl5-porters/2006-02/msg00572.html.


COPYRIGHT AND LICENCE
---------------------

Copyright (C) 2004-2006 Daniel Schröer

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the same terms as Perl itself.