Using NI-VIsa in Matlab without Instrument Control Toolbox

I am trying to establish a Visa session in Matlab without the Instrument Control Toolbox.

Either via COM-Interface or .NET reference. However neither seems to work.

I tried creating COM-Servers with the same DLLs that are used in MS Excel to create a Visa Session (GlobMgr.dll and BasFormIO.dll). I have tried every ProgID i could find in the DLLs but none works. Because every time I run the file Matlab just crashes, logging Access violation detected at "Time I ran the file". However, if i try to create a COM-Server of an own created object it works fine.

So maybe i can't create COM-Interfaces from DLLs or I use the wrong ProgIDs?

visaObj = actxserver('VISA.GlobalRM');
formIO = actxserver('VISA.BasicFormattedIO');

As for the .NET references I added the Ivi.Visa DLL which should already add all dependencies it needs with it. Matlab even tells me Assembly Ivi.Visa.Interop has alread been added from Ivi.Visa.Interop.dll when i try to add it too.

asm1 = NET.addAssembly('C:\Windows\assembly\GAC_MSIL\Ivi.Visa\7.2.0.0__a128c98f1d7717c1\Ivi.Visa.dll');
asm2 = NET.addAssembly('C:\Program Files\IVI Foundation\VISA\VisaCom64\Primary Interop Assemblies\Ivi.Visa.Interop.dll');

I can import the namespaces I need which would be.

import Ivi.Visa.*
import NationalInstruments.Visa.*
import Ivi.Visa.interop.*
import NationalInstruments.Common.*

But as soon as I try to use functions from them Matlab says "Error using Ivi.Visa.Interop.ResourceManager: No constructior 'Ivi.Visa.Interop.ResourceManager' with matching signature found."

rm = ResourceManager();

Which is odd because obviously it understood, that the resource manager is in the Ivi.Visa.Interop namespace.

Has anyone encountered a similar issue and managed to fix it?

[Walter Roberson]

Complete guess:

Maybe the ResourceManager call needs to be passed a parameter?

Answer 1

[Simon]

I figured out the .NET part:

Don't make an instance of the resource manager. Instead directly open a session like so:

session = GlobalResourceManager.Open("YourResource");

Also you only have to load the Ivi.Visa assembly and don't need to import the namespaces. Then you can read and write with

session.RawIO.Write()
session.RawIO.ReadString()

However I still have not figured out the correct ProgId to implement the same functionality via COM.