Built-in support for ActiveX and COM

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Thu, 04/16/2009 - 12:39 am

An increasingly large number of instrument manufactures (Agilent, LeCroy, Tek, Aeroflex, etc) have moved towards using ActiveX and COM (and DCOM) for interfacing to their products. For example, this seems to be the main model Agilent has moved to, even for simple instruments like DVMs. They basically provide a server program for most of there instruments that obscures the actually physical and software interface (GPIB, RS-232, Ethernet) and that you are supposed to interact with through ActiveX or COM. Of course, you can still do things with GPIB, but this is inefficient for complex interactions or working with large data sets, as you get from a modern, deep memory scope. At the moment, using one of these ActiveX or COM interfaces in Igor requires writing a dedicated XOP (which I have done in some cases). It would greatly simplify things and greatly enhance Igor's data taking capability if there where a native or built-in way for Igor to use ActiveX or COM. A related feature, would be allowing Igor to make calls to DLLs directly (as is possible, with many caveats, in Matlab). -- Chris
That would be nice, although I'm not sure where COM stands in Microsoft's plans.

I wrote Igor's ActiveX Automation support code. It took about six months to go up the learning curve and then implement the code, test it, document it and produce sample client code. I think it would take about the same to implement ActiveX client support in Igor. I don't think I'm going to find the time to do it.

I did write an XOP and documentation that shows how to create an XOP that is a client of an ActiveX control. It is here.

I did this using MFC because I could not figure out how to do it in straight C++ and I have been unable to find a straight C++ example.

How did you implement your ActiveX client XOP and what does it support?

April 16, 2009 at 07:08 pm - Permalink

Actually, I haven't written an ActiveX client for instrument control. I've written the interface in straight C using a traditional dll. I wrote it for a set of PXI instruments made by Aeroflex, in particular their line of RF vector digitizers and signal generators. Do you know of any other users using Aeroflex equipment? I wouldn't be adverse to sharing the XOPs. -- Chris

April 24, 2009 at 08:37 am - Permalink

cmw32 wrote:
Do you know of any other users using Aeroflex equipment?


I don't. You might just create a forum topic with Aeroflex in the title so someone searching is more likely to find it.

April 26, 2009 at 07:25 pm - Permalink