I'm experienced with LabVIEW, but about to control an instrument in a way that I never have before: plugged in via USB and presenting a serial ASCII interface. I may use the instrument on both Windows and Mac.
Several questions, relevant to both operating systems:
1. Is VISA The best tool for working with this?
2. On a Mac at least, the identifier for the serial port changes based on which USB port I plug into. So I want to know how to handle this in a user-friendly manner. Is there a good way to get a list of all available serial ports and present that to the user in a menu box?
3. Is there any sort of standardized protocol for getting a serial device to identify itself – so that I could poll the available serial devices and automatically figure out which one is my instrument? The device is not a National Instruments product.