Instrument Control Toolbox

Installation Information

To communicate with your GPIB, VXI, or serial port instrument from the MATLAB environment, you must install these three components:

• The Instrument Control Toolbox
• Instrumentation hardware; this may be a plug-in device such as a GPIB controller, or an external instrument such as a signal generator
• Software associated with your instrument such as interface drivers, support libraries, and so on

Toolbox Installation

To determine if the Instrument Control Toolbox is installed on your system, type

ver

at the MATLAB prompt. MATLAB displays information about the version of MATLAB you are running, including a list of installed add-on products and their version numbers. Check the list to see if the Instrument Control Toolbox appears.

For information about installing the toolbox, refer to the MATLAB Installation Guide for your platform. If you experience installation difficulties and have Web access, look for the installation and license information at the MathWorks Web site (http://www.mathworks.com/support).

Hardware and Driver Installation

Installation of hardware devices such as GPIB controllers, instrument drivers, support libraries, and so on is described in the documentation provided by the instrument vendor. Many vendors provide the latest drivers through their Web site. For a list of vendor driver requirements and limitations, refer to the Instrument Control Toolbox Release Notes.

Note    You must install all necessary device-specific software provided by the instrument vendor in addition to the Instrument Control Toolbox.

How This Guide Is Organized

Typographical Conventions