Using the Instruments

The NI ELVIS III combines a suite of instruments that offers the same functionality as a set of stand-alone benchtop instruments commonly used in electronics laboratories.

You can use the Soft Front Panels (SFPs) to interact with the instruments on the NI ELVIS III without programming. You can also program the instruments after you install the NI ELVIS III Software Bundle. The NI ELVIS III Software Bundle includes the LabVIEW ELVIS III Toolkit, which provides the Instruments and Control I/O palettes that contain VIs for controlling the instrumentation I/O and control I/O channels respectively on the NI ELVIS III.

The instruments leverage two types of I/O on the NI ELVIS III: Instrumentation I/O and Control I/O.

Instrumentation I/O

The following diagram shows the NI ELVIS III with the instrumentation I/O labeled.

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  1. Function Generator
  2. Oscilloscope
  3. IV Analyzer
  4. Trigger
  5. Logic Analyzer/Pattern Generator
  6. Variable Power Supplies
  7. Digital Multimeter
  8. Digital Multimeter Fuse

The following diagram shows the NI ELVIS III hardware architecture with the instrumentation I/O highlighted.


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You may encounter resource conflicts if you run certain instrument circuitry simultaneously. The following table shows all the instrumentation resource conflicts. To use the information in the following table, find the instrument you want to use in the left column. The rows from that left column lists all the functions that are resource conflicts. If the intersecting box contains an X, you cannot use those functions simultaneously; otherwise you may encounter resource conflicts. If the intersecting box is empty, you can use those functions simultaneously.

Table 1. Instrumentation Resource Conflicts
Oscilloscope Function Generator Digital Multimeter (Capacitance/Inductance) Digital Multimeter (Other) Variable Power Supplies Logic Analyzer and Pattern Generator IV Analyzer Bode Analyzer
Oscilloscope - X X X
Function Generator - X X X
Digital Multimeter (Capacitance/Inductance) X X - X X
Digital Multimeter (Other) -
Variable Power Supplies -
Logic Analyzer and Pattern Generator -
IV Analyzer X X X - X
Bode Analyzer X X X X -

Control I/O

The following diagram shows the NI ELVIS III with most control I/O terminals labeled. The labeled terminals are used by the instruments.


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  1. Analog input terminals used by the Data Logger
  2. Analog output terminals used by the Data Generator
  3. Digital input/output terminals used by the Digital I/O
Note You can use the NI ELVIS III Prototyping Board to access the control I/O terminals.

The following diagram shows the NI ELVIS III hardware architecture with the control I/O highlighted.


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Note The Digital I/O uses only 16 out of the 20 digital input/output channels.

Refer to Programming the Control I/O to learn how to program the control I/O with LabVIEW. When running the instruments that use the control I/O channels, you may encounter resource conflicts in one of the following three conditions:

  • LabVIEW is running a custom FPGA bitfile.
  • LabVIEW and Measurements Live are running different versions of the Control I/O VIs.
  • LabVIEW and Measurements Live are using the same control I/O channel(s) simultaneously.

You can close the related VIs in LabVIEW to resolve the resource conflict.