README for Lab::VISA 
--------------------

This library offers a perl interface to National Instrument's NI-VISA 
library. 

With this library you can easily control the instruments in your lab 
(multimeters, voltage sources, magnet sources, pulse generators etc.) 
with Perl. You can perform complicated measurement jobs with just some 
Perl loops. 

Even better: The Lab::Instrument class reduces the communication 
overhead to simple read, write and query methods. On top of this, there 
are specialized instrument classes (virtual instruments) such as 
Lab::Instrument::HP34401A, that offer even more high level comfort with 
methods such as read_voltage. 

The Lab::Tools package offers classes to simplify the task of logging 
data to disk and maintaining this data. 


INSTALLATION
------------

This library has been tested to work on Linux and Windows. 

A step-by-step installation tutorial for Windows is given in the file 
INSTALLATION_ON_WINDOWS.txt. 

As a Linux user you will probably be able to figure things out yourself. 
Before you start, you must have the VISA library by National Instrument 
installed. If you plan to use GPIB connections (which is very likely), 
you must also have the necessary drivers (NI-488.2) for your GPIB 
adapter card installed. Refer to the good documentation by National 
Instruments to learn about these packages. 

See National Instrument's website at 
  http://digital.ni.com/softlib.nsf/webcategories/85256410006C055586256BBB002C0E91?opendocument&node=132060_US 


FURTHER SUPPORT
---------------

You are encouraged to use a public forum for discussing problems related to
Lab::VISA. This way future users will take advantage of your findings too.

There is a mailing list set up for Lab::VISA at
  https://www-mailman.uni-regensburg.de/mailman/listinfo/lab-visa-users

A webbased discussion forum (that can be reached from the CPAN page) is located at
  http://cpanforum.com/dist/Lab-VISA

Bugs can be reported to
  https://rt.cpan.org/Public/Dist/Display.html?Name=Lab-VISA

You will also find that the authors of this package are always happy to receive feedback.


COPYRIGHT AND LICENCE
--------------------- 

(c) 2004-2006 Daniel Schröer
(c) 2006-2010 Daniel Schröer, Andreas Hüttel, Daniela Taubert, and others 

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it 
under the same terms as Perl itself. 

