Programming the NI Switch Product
You can acquire data interactively using the NI-SWITCH Soft Front Panel (SFP), or you can
control the device programmatically using the NI-SWITCH instrument driver. You can then
use NI-SWITCH to program the device in the application development environment (ADE) of
your choice.
Table 4. NI Switch Product Programming Options
Application
Programming
Interface (API)
Location
Description
NI-SWITCH SFP
Available from the Start menu or
NI Launcher in Windows 8.
Provides a graphical interface for
controlling and viewing the state
of your NI switch product.
NI-SWITCH
Instrument Driver
LabVIEW or LabWindows/CVI—
Available on the LabVIEW
Functions palette at
Measurement
I/O
»
NI-SWITCH
.
Features a set of operations and
attributes that exercise all the
functionality of the NI switch
product, including configuration,
control, and other device-specific
functions.
C or LabWindows/CVI—
Available at
Program Files
\IVI Foundation\IVI
\Drivers\niSWITCH
.
Installed examples for Visual
C/C++ are in the
NI-SWITCH Readme
.
Refer to the
Creating an
Application with Microsoft Visual
C/C++
topic in the
NI Switches
Help
for information about
developing an NI-SWITCH
application.
NI-DAQmx
Instrument Driver
Available from the Start menu or
NI Launcher in Windows 8. To
locate examples, go to
and enter the Info Code
daqmxexp
. For additional
You can operate NI switch
products with the NI-DAQmx
API. NI-DAQmx is useful when
using hardware scanning with
multiple NI switch products. The
NI-DAQmx API supports all NI
switch products and is not IVI
compliant.
NI-SWITCH Examples
Examples demonstrate the functionality of the device and serve as programming models and
building blocks for your own applications. The NI Example Finder is a utility available for
some software applications that organizes examples into categories and allows you to easily
NI Switches Getting Started Guide | © National Instruments | 17
