Communicate with a GPIB Instrument

For information about instrument communication and a list of the commands that your instrument understands, refer to the documentation that came with your GPIB instrument. Most instruments respond to the *IDN? command by returning an identification string.

For interactive communication with GPIB instruments, use the Interactive Control utility, as follows:

  1. Launch Interactive Control.
  2. At the command prompt, type NI-488.2 API calls to communicate interactively with your instrument. For example, you might use ibdev, ibclr, ibwrt, ibrd, and ibonl.

To view the help for Interactive Control, type help at the Interactive Control command prompt.