Using FTDI USB Devices in NI MAX or LabVIEW

Issue Details

• I am trying to communicate to my USB FTDI device using LabVIEW. I can see it in Device Manager but cannot see it in NI MAX. How do I get it to appear in NI MAX?
• What is needed to communicate with my USB FTDI devices in LabVIEW? I want to use the USB port on my controller to act as a COM port.

Solution

Make sure you have NI-VISA installed. You can verify this within NI MAX by expanding the software tree to see if NI-VISA is listed towards the bottom.  If you do not see the NI-VISA driver there, you can download and install the NI-VISA driver from National Instruments VISA Driver Download Page

Once you have this installed, you should see the device within NI MAX under My System»Devices and Interfaces»Serial & Parallel»"Your Device" (ComPort).

To communicate to it in LabVIEW you will need to configure the Serial port with the right baud rate and use the VIs supplied with NI-VISA.

Additional Information

• FTDI Driver API for Serial by Ovak Technologies - Interface Synchronous Serial Devices to a USB Port
• FTDI Driver for I2C SPI GPIO by AJ - Read and Write SPI I2C and Generic GPIO in FTDI FT4222