Skip to content

instrument-components

High-level control for VISA / SCPI instruments in Rust and C#: auto-discovery, IVI-inspired typed classes, and mock fixtures for CI — without waiting on a vendor IVI class driver.

What you get

  • Auto-discovery of USB, GPIB, and serial VISA resources
  • Typed instrument classes with SI units (V, A, Hz, s): DMM, DC power supply, function generator, oscilloscope, switch, counter, power meter, spectrum analyzer
  • Mock transport for hardware-free CI
  • Stable DeviceId for instrument replacement workflows
  • Opt-in async APIs (true async in Rust via visa-rs; sync bridge in C# today)

Choose your path

I want to… Start here
First measure (mock, no VISA) Getting started
Discover real instruments Discovery
Use a typed class Instrument classes
Async I/O Rust async · C# async
Author OpenTAP plans C# OpenTAP pack
See what's implemented Capability matrix

Install

# Mock / CI
instrument-components = { version = "0.1", default-features = false }

# Hardware (VISA default)
instrument-components = "0.1"

Import: use instrument::prelude::*;

Package publishing is deferred; reference projects from this repo for now:

dotnet add reference path/to/InstrumentComponents.csproj
# Hardware also needs:
dotnet add reference path/to/InstrumentComponents.Visa.csproj

Mock → volts

use instrument::prelude::*;

fn main() -> Result<()> {
    let fixture = ScriptedFixture::builder()
        .idn("Keysight Technologies", "34401A", "SN1", "1.0")
        .kinds([InstrumentKind::Dmm])
        .on_query("*IDN?", "Keysight Technologies,34401A,SN1,1.0")
        .on_query(":MEAS:VOLT:DC?", "1.234")
        .build();

    let catalog = DeviceCatalog::from_fixture("mock://dmm-1", fixture)?;
    let volts = catalog.open_dmm("mock://dmm-1")?.measure_voltage_dc(None)?;
    println!("{volts} V");
    Ok(())
}

using InstrumentComponents.Catalog;
using InstrumentComponents.Kind;
using InstrumentComponents.Mock;

var fixture = ScriptedFixture.Builder()
    .Idn("Keysight Technologies", "34401A", "SN1", "1.0")
    .Kinds(InstrumentKind.Dmm)
    .OnQuery("*IDN?", "Keysight Technologies,34401A,SN1,1.0")
    .OnQuery(":MEAS:VOLT:DC?", "1.234")
    .Build();

var catalog = DeviceCatalog.FromFixture("mock://dmm-1", fixture);
var volts = catalog.OpenDmm("mock://dmm-1").MeasureVoltageDc();
Console.WriteLine($"{volts} V");

Source & API reference