Using Thorlabs DPC5500 with Matlab

Has anyone been able to interface the Thorlabs DPC5500 polarization controller with Matlab? The system uses VISA-TCPIP drivers, but after connecting the device, i cannot read any data out of the device. I used the NI I/O Trace application to look at the communications and it seems the viOpenDefaultRM session address is wrong. Is there a way of telling matlab to use specific session addresses? I suspect part of the problem is that matlab is using a generic type visa instrument, and there are no Thorlab instruments. Does anyone know of a good tutorial on how to create a new visa instrument in matlab? any information will be of great help.

Answer 1

[Vinod]

I think you need to look at the manual for the thorlabs device and see if the commands you are sending to get the instrument to respond are correct. I usually start with the *IDN? query and see if that works.

Answer 2

[Vinod]

Can you point me to the driver you are using? Also if you haven't already, take a look at the documentation on using drivers in MATLAB .

Answer 3

[Fernando Souto]

Hi Vinod, I am using the latest NI VISA drivers (version 5.4) and the 2014 Instrument control toolbox. The output i get from the instrhwinfo is:

if true
  % code
instrhwinfo
MATLABVersion: '8.3 (R2014a)'
  SupportedInterfaces: {'gpib'  'serial'  'tcpip'  'udp'  'visa'  'Bluetooth'  'i2c'  'spi'}
     SupportedDrivers: {'matlab'  'ivi'  'vxipnp'}
          ToolboxName: 'Instrument Control Toolbox'
       ToolboxVersion: '3.5 (R2014a)'
instrhwinfo('visa')
  InstalledAdaptors: {'ni'}
     JarFileVersion: 'Version 3.5'
vt=visa('ni','TCPIP::172.16.6.98::2402::SOCKET')
VISA-Generic Object Using NI Adaptor : TCPIP0::172.16.6.98::2402::SOCKET

   Communication Address 
      Resource Address:   TCPIP0::172.16.6.98::2402::SOCKET

   Communication State 
      Status:             closed
      RecordStatus:       off

   Read/Write State  
      TransferStatus:     idle
      BytesAvailable:     0
      ValuesReceived:     0
      ValuesSent:         0
instrhwinfo(vt)
AdaptorDllName: 'C:\Program Files\MATLAB\R2014a\toolbox\instrument\instrumentadaptors\w...'
          AdaptorDllVersion: 'Version 3.5'
                AdaptorName: 'NI'
              VendorDllName: 'visa32.dll'
    VendorDriverDescription: 'National Instruments VISA Driver'
        VendorDriverVersion: 5.4100

end

using the tmtool, i can see the connection is created when i use fopen, and if i try to use the send data command ("hello world") it seems to be successful, but when i try to read the data back, i only receive a "?" instead of the data sent. I can use the NI MAX I/O Trace interface, i can see the commands sent by matlab

if true
  % code
viWrite (TCPIP0::172.16.6.98::240... (0x00000001), "hello world.", 12, 12)
Process ID: 0x00001AE4         Thread ID: 0x00002AC0
Start Time: 08:47:05.294       Call Duration 00:00:00.001
Status: 0 (VI_SUCCESS)
Buffer Contents
00000000:  68 65 6C 6C 6F 20 77 6F 72 6C 64 0A              hello world.
viRead (TCPIP0::172.16.6.98::240... (0x00000001), "?.?.", 512, 4)
Process ID: 0x00001AE4         Thread ID: 0x00002AC0
Start Time: 08:47:09.033       Call Duration 00:00:00.012
Status: 0 (VI_SUCCESS)
Buffer Contents
00000000:  3F 0A 3F 0A                                      ?.?.

end

thank you very much for time and help! Fernando