Stack structure

An instrument interfacing hardware and software stack involves a number of standards to work. Tools and libraries act as different implementations of these standards.

• Hardware standards
  • General Purpose Interface Bus (GPIB)
  • Universal Serial Bus (USB)
    • USB Test and Measurement Class (USBTMC)
  • LAN/Ethernet
    • LAN eXtensions for Instrumentation
    • VXI-11 Protocol
• Software standards
  • Virtual Instrument Software Architecture (VISA)
    • Common implementations:
      • NI-VISA by National Instruments
      • pyVISA as part of the python stack we use
  • Interchangeable Virtual Instruments (IVI)
    • Common implementations:
      • NI-IDL IVI Driver Library by National Instruments
      • python-ivi as part of the python stack we use

Most of the common-used instrument standards are maintained by the IVI foundation and their specification collection could be accessed here.