=head1 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 L<Lab::Instrument|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 
L<Lab::Instrument::HP34401A|Lab::Instrument::HP34401A>, that offer even more high level comfort with 
methods such as read_voltage. 

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

L<Lab::VISA> is known to work with GPIB, TCPIP and serial connections. Other interfaces
supported by the NI-VISA library are likely to work as well.

=head1 INSTALLATION

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

Detailed installation instructions are given in L<Lab::VISA::Installation>.

=head1 FURTHER SUPPORT

A general introduction to using Lab::Visa is given in L<Lab::VISA::Tutorial>.
A powerpoint presentation is available at Tutorial/Talk/Lab-VISA.ppt.
The examples shown therein are located in the C<Tutorial> directory of this package.
A description of the various APIs can be found in the respective POD sections, i.e.
at L<Lab::VISA|Lab::VISA>.

In case you encounter any problems, you are encouraged to use a
public forum for discussion. This way future users will be able to take
advantage of your findings.

There is a mailing list set up for Lab::VISA at
L<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
L<http://cpanforum.com/dist/Lab-VISA>

Bugs can be reported to
L<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.

=head1 COPYRIGHT AND LICENCE

 (c) 2004-2006 Daniel Schröer
 (c) 2007-2010 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. 

