FreePascal bindings for National Instrument oscilloscope/digitizer cards

[mig-31]

Hello all,
I opened this topic because there is no subforum for Automation and Measurement.

National Instruments provide ANSI C headers for library NI-Scope for working with their oscilloscope/digitazer cards, for example NI PCI-5122 http://sine.ni.com/nips/cds/view/p/lang/cs/nid/13309.

NI-Scope for Windows http://www.ni.com/download/ni-scope-4.1.3/4598/en/
NI-Scope for Linux http://www.ni.com/download/ni-scope-3.1/1633/en/

I discovered C headers (approx. 5 files) and its have macros and some other definitions, which need deeper C knowledge.
From my side i can also propose bindings testing on real harware, because we will have two NI PXI-5122 card this year or at the start of New Year.

I think it will be good to create binding for FreePascal.

[Laksen]

Well where are the C headers? Are they just a raw VISA register interface, or maybe an IVI driver interface?

If it's just the VISA(visa.h and visatype.h) headers plus a header for the register table in the specific card then you can find a conversion of the VISA headers here: https://github.com/Laksen/FP-VISA

[mig-31]

It Ivi driver interface.
From my discovering it six C headers files:
ivi.h
IviScope.h
niScope.h
visa.h
visatype.h
vpptype.h

The most problem is how to convert macros:
its do something or not?
remove all of them?
terrible stringification?

If it's just the VISA(visa.h and visatype.h) headers plus a header for the register table in the specific card then you can find a conversion of the VISA headers here: https://github.com/Laksen/FP-VISA

Two of them you have already translated.

Well where are the C headers? Are they just a raw VISA register interface, or maybe an IVI driver interface?

I don't know if I can upload C headers here, due to copyright restrictions?

[Laksen]

IviScope sounds like it could be used from IVI-COM. The other headers are probably for a IVI-C interface

If you are on windows you should be able to generate that a header for IVI-COM with importtl. Just run it on the DLL that NI supplies and you should have an autogenerated IVI-COM wrapper right away without the need for the VISA header stuff

[mig-31]

What is importtl?
I can't find this tool

[Laksen]

It should come with fpc. At least it does in SVN trunk

[mig-31]

Thanks, I will try it.

Did you convert visa.h and visatypes.h by partly using h2pas utility or just manually?

[Laksen]

I used Chelper and some manual fiddling

[Paul Breneman]

I hope to add information from these messages to this page: http://controlpascal.com/

The Comedi page (http://controlpascal.com/comedi.htm) has similar material.

[mig-31]

It will be good, but now we only have binding for NI-VISA, not complete NI-Scope. Thanks for @Laksen.
And also comedy drivers are not supported NI oscilloscopes/digitazers. I hope, yet.

[mig-31]

I have a problem to convert this part form ivi.h, because i don't what it is

#define IVI_VAL_NAN             (*Ivi_GetPtrToSpecialViReal64Value(IVI_VAL_TYPE_NAN))
#define IVI_VAL_PINF            (*Ivi_GetPtrToSpecialViReal64Value(IVI_VAL_TYPE_PINF))
#define IVI_VAL_NINF            (*Ivi_GetPtrToSpecialViReal64Value(IVI_VAL_TYPE_NINF))

It looks like macro to pointer of function

[marcov]

Ivi_GetPtrToSpecialViReal64Value(IVI_VAL_TYPE_NAN)

run that macro or function, which returns a pointer.

The asterix then dereferences that pointer. (

So  literally it is

Code: [Select]

{$define IVI_VAL_NAN   := (Ivi_GetPtrToSpecialViReal64Value(IVI_VAL_TYPE_NAN)^)}

though while possible, making it a macro doesn't make much sense in Pascal.

[mig-31]

Thank,
I think so.

Code: [Select]

{$define IVI_VAL_NAN   := (Ivi_GetPtrToSpecialViReal64Value(IVI_VAL_TYPE_NAN)^)}
Ivi_GetPtrToSpecialViReal64Value - function, IVI_VAL_TYPE_NAN -parametr and defined in other header

I check it not used in other parts of header and other headers.

Only for understanding, can we rewrite it using constant variable like

Code: [Select]

var
  IVI_VAL_NAN:Pointer=Ivi_GetPtrToSpecialViReal64Value(IVI_VAL_TYPE_NAN)^;


[mig-31]

Still I don't know if I can upload here C headers to NI-Scope driver.

[mig-31]

Hi, all

there are Pascal bindings for NI-Scope 14.0 driver for Win32 (probably works with Win64) and NI-Scope 3.1 fo Linux 32-bit.
Not tested on real hardware.

Simply add niscope.pas to your project to test it with your hardware. You can find information how to work with it in ANSI C examples, which are distributed with NI-Scope driver.
I hope, when I have real hardware, I will upload some basic examples in Pascal. Without real hardware, I think there is no sense to rewrite some ANSI C examples to Pascal.
There is a good guard to make first steps with NI-Scope on National Instruments web http://www.ni.com/white-paper/3382/en/

Linux version probably works only for linux kernel 2.6.x, which still supported https://www.kernel.org/ and used in RHEL5,6, Scientific Linux 5,6 (supported until 2017) and old distributions like Mandriva 2006 or Suse Linux.

Bindings are in the attachments.