Natively Supported and Custom Instruments (TSM)

The TSM natively supports the following types of instruments for LabVIEW and .NET:

NI Instrument Pin Map Instrument Type Instrument Driver and Pin Map API Support Preferred Method of Interacting with Instrument
Digital Pattern Instrument NIDigitalPatternInstrument NI-Digital Pattern Digital Pattern Editor
DC Power Supply or Source-Measure Unit (SMU) NIDCPowerInstrument NI-DCPower Digital Pattern Editor
Data Acquisition and Signal Conditioning (DAQ) NIDAQmxTask NI-DAQmx —
Digital Multimeter (DMM) NIDmmInstrument NI-DMM InstrumentStudio
Arbitrary Waveform and Function Generator NIFGenInstrument NI-FGEN InstrumentStudio
High-Speed Digitizer NIScopeInstrument NI-SCOPE InstrumentStudio
High-Speed Digital I/O NIHSDIOInstrument NI-HSDIO —
RF Signal Analyzer NIRFSAInstrument NI-RFSANI-RFmx RFmx SFP
RF Signal Generator NIRFSGInstrument NI-RFSG RFmx SFP
Vector Signal Transceiver NIVSTInstrument NI-RFSANI-RFSGNI-RFmxFPGA (LabVIEW only) RFmx SFP
RF Port Module NIRFPMInstrument NI-RFPM RFmx SFP
Relay Driver Module NIRelayDriverModule NI-SWITCH Digital Pattern Editor
Note
  • The NI TestStand 2016 Semiconductor Module and later natively support digital pattern instruments that use the NI-Digital Pattern Driver and legacy digital waveform instruments that use the NI-HSDIO driver, such as the PXIe-6556. Use the TSM Code Module API that corresponds to the type of digital instrument the test system includes.
  • Consider using the following instrument naming convention for semiconductor test programs: InstrumentType_ModelNumber_PXIChassisLocation_SlotLocation, for example, HSD_657x_C2_S03, where InstrumentType is an ASCII description of the instrument, ModelNumber is the model number as defined on ni.com, PXIChassisLocation uses a single digit to identify the PXI chassis (Cx), and SlotLocation uses double digits to identify the slot location (Sxx).

Custom Instruments

You can use other types of instruments in a pin map by using the generic <Instrument> tag in the pin map file. Refer to the example sequence files, pin map files, and LabVIEW code module VIs located in the <TestStand Public>\Examples\Custom Instruments directory for examples of using TSM pin map files and VIs to perform tests using instruments that TSM does not natively support.

You can create custom site and pin aware instrument panel VIs to control and measure pins during test program execution at a breakpoint, which can be useful during test program development and troubleshooting.