NI_USB-6501

python driver for NI USB-6501

The ni_usb_6501 is a digital IO module for National Instrument's NI USB-6501 adapter. Unfortunately NI's Linux driver is excessively large (>60MB), difficult to install and doesn't offer off-the-shelf support for python.

This python driver is based on Marc Schutz's pioneer work on c driver (https://github.com/schuetzm/ni-usb-6501)

INSTALLATION

1. Install the latest PyUSB (at least version 1.0.a3) from http://sourceforge.net/projects/pyusb/

2. Change the permissions of the USB device node by creating a udev rule. e.g. add the following line (and file) to a file in /etc/udev/rules.d/usb.rules

SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ENV{DEVTYPE}=="usb_device", MODE="0664", GROUP="usbusers"

This will set the owner of the device node to root:usbusers rather than root:root After that add user to the usbusers group for enabling access to the device.

adduser usbusers

(Make sure you have group usbusers)

...and you are good to go.

TODO

• Counter operations

EXAMPLE

    dev = get_adapter()

    if not dev:
        raise Exception("No device found")

    dev.set_io_mode(0b11111111, 0b11111111, 0b00000000)

    dev.write_port(0, 0b11001100)
    dev.write_port(1, 0b10101010)

    print bin(dev.read_port(2))