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

NI-VISA is an implementation of the Virtual Instrument Software Architecture (VISA) standard for configuring and programming test systems. NI-VISA provides support for communicating with instruments over Ethernet, GPIB, serial, USB, VXI, and PXI interfaces.

MATLAB® and Simulink® support NI-VISA through Instrument Control Toolbox™.  With this support, 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. 

In addition to NI-VISA, Instrument Control Toolbox also supports Keysight VISA, R&S VISA and Tektronix VISA implementations. Tektronix VISA is only supported through the legacy visa command and is not supported with the visadev command.

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 18.1
National Instruments®
 NI-VISA Version 19.5
Tektronix®
 TekVISA Version 4.0
Rohde & Schwarz
 R&S VISA® 5.12

Get Your Support Package

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

For Agilent/Keysight Technologies

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For National Instruments

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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.

Starting in R2021a, Tektronix VISA is only supported through the legacy visa command and is not supported with the visadev command. TekVISA must be installed manually.

Related Resources

Required Products and Hardware

  • Any instrument that can communicate over the VISA standard

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