Oct. 6, 2009 (PR Newswire) --

AUSTIN, Texas, Oct. 6, 2009 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- National Instruments (Nasdaq: NATI) today announced more than 8,000 instrument drivers available through the NI Instrument Driver Network (IDNet) that make it easy to connect and control stand-alone instruments. IDNet is the industry's largest source of instrument drivers and easy-to-use software optimized for instrument control, including NI LabVIEW, LabWindowsTM/CVI and Measurement Studio for Microsoft Visual Studio. This network, which includes more than 500 new drivers added since April 2009, offers instrument drivers to connect to both NI instruments and stand-alone instruments from more than 325 vendors, including Tektronix, Agilent Technologies and Rohde & Schwarz. By using this source of instrument drivers, engineers and scientists can save time by getting their measurements faster and achieve more with their overall applications.

From IDNet, engineers and scientists can download LabVIEW Plug and Play, LabWindows/CVI Plug and Play and Interchangeable Virtual Instrument (IVI) instrument drivers certified by NI to automate measurements from thousands of instruments. With NI software, available instrument drivers can simplify instrument automation over a variety of buses including GPIB, USB, PXI, PCI, Ethernet and LXI.

In addition to IDNet, LabVIEW makes instrument control easier by providing an intuitive graphical programming interface, offering extensive support with certified instrument drivers and including other time-saving configuration and troubleshooting tools to help engineers and scientists acquire, analyze and present data. With a single environment for measurements and analysis, users spend less time setting up tests and more time concentrating on the results. The Instrument Driver Finder (IDFinder) Wizard helps engineers and scientists instantly locate instrument drivers and example code on IDNet and install them in the LabVIEW palette for immediate use. LabVIEW and the IDFinder significantly reduce time to first measurement by helping users get up and running without ever having to leave the LabVIEW environment.

All NI instrument drivers are built using the Virtual Instrument Software Architecture (VISA), an industry-standard I/O programming interface that abstracts away the underlying bus communication for a consistent programming experience regardless of the instrument bus used.