NI-VISA and Other VISA Support from Instrument Control Toolbox

Use the VISA (NI-VISA, Keysight VISA, TekVISA, and R&S VISA) standard to communicate with instruments from MATLAB.

Capabilities and Features

MATLAB® and Simulink® support the VISA standard through Instrument Control Toolbox™. You can use MATLAB software to control instruments, make measurements, analyze data, and build test systems. Once data is in MATLAB, you can analyze and visualize that data for tasks such as signal processing, statistical analysis, digital filtering, and curve fitting. 

VISA is a standard for configuring and programming test systems. Instrument Control Toolbox enables you to work with one or more of the following VISA interfaces directly from MATLAB or Simulink.

Supported VISA Software

Instrument Control Toolbox supports VISA software from the manufacturers shown below.

Manufacturer Recommended Minimum Version
Agilent/Keysight Technologies I/O Libraries Version 17.0
National Instruments®
 NI-VISA Version 14.0
Tektronix®
 TekVISA Version 4.0
Rohde & Schwarz
 R&S VISA® 5.8.2 for Windows
  R&S VISA® 5.5.6 for Mac

Get Your Support Package

There are four support packages you can choose from depending on the hardware you're using. Click to get your support package now:

For Agilent/Keysight Technologies

Get support package

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For National Instruments

Get support package

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For Rohde & Schwarz

Get support package

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For Tektronix

Download TekVISA

Platform and Release Support

VISA software support is available on 64-bit Microsoft® Windows® and Mac OS (NI-VISA® and R&S VISA) using the support packages listed above.

The NI-VISA support package is available for R2015a and higher on 64-bit Microsoft Windows. On Mac OS, it is available for release R2015b and higher. For releases prior to R2015a, NI-VISA must be installed manually on Windows platforms and is not available on the Mac OS platform.  

The Keysight VISA and I/O Libraries support package is available for R2015b and higher on 64-bit Microsoft Windows. For earlier releases, Keysight VISA and IO Libraries must be installed manually.

The R&S VISA support package is available for R2018a and higher on 64-bit Microsoft Windows and on Mac OS. For earlier releases, R&S VISA must be installed manually.

TekVISA is supported on earlier releases, but it must be installed manually.

Related Hardware Support Views: Agilent, Communication Infrastructure, Connections Program, Consumer Electronics, Ethernet, Instrument Control Toolbox, Instrumentation, Keysight, MathWorks Supported, MATLAB Product Family, National Instruments, Rohde & Schwarz, Serial, Support Package Installer Enabled, Tektronix, Test and Measurement, USB

Software

Required

Recommended

Required

For NI-VISA and R&S VISA on Mac and Windows platforms and for Keysight VISA on Windows platforms, the Support Package Installer installs this support package and all required third-party software. To start the installer, go to the MATLAB toolstrip and click Add-Ons > Get Hardware Support Packages. For more information, read the documentation.

For TekVISA on Windows platforms, see the Third-Party Hardware Requirements section.

Hardware

Required

  • Any instrument that can communicate over the VISA standard

Software

Required

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