National Instruments Now Offers More Than 9,000 Instrument Drivers to Simplify and Automate Instrument Control


Engineers Can More Easily Search and Download New Drivers With IDFinder in NI LabVIEW 2010

AUSTIN, Texas -- National Instruments (Nasdaq: NATI) now offers more than 9,000 drivers from more than 350 vendors through the Instrument Driver Network (IDNet) that simplify and automate connection to stand-alone instruments. IDNet, the industry's largest source of instrument drivers, includes more than 1,000 new drivers added since November 2009. The drivers are written for the NI LabVIEW graphical development platform, the NI LabWindows(TM)/CVI ANSI C integrated development environment and Measurement Studio for Microsoft Visual Studio.

Engineers, scientists and instrument manufacturers around the world have relied on National Instruments software and instrument drivers since the first version of LabVIEW was shipped in 1986. With the latest version, LabVIEW 2010, engineers can use the new Instrument Driver Finder (IDFinder) to quickly search IDNet and download different LabVIEW Plug and Play instrument drivers for their stand-alone instruments. IDFinder scans the system for connected instruments; downloads and installs the appropriate drivers; and presents ready-to-run examples to the engineer. IDFinder significantly reduces time to first measurement by helping engineers get up and running without leaving the LabVIEW environment.

From IDNet, engineers can download LabVIEW Plug and Play, LabWindows/CVI Plug and Play and interchangeable virtual instrument (IVI) drivers certified by NI to automate measurements from thousands of instruments. With NI software, instrument drivers can simplify instrument automation across a variety of buses including GPIB, USB, PXI, PCI, Ethernet, LXI and RS232. NI builds all of its instrument drivers using VISA, an industry-standard I/O programming interface that abstracts the underlying bus communication for a consistent programming experience regardless of the instrument bus.

To learn more about IDNet, visit ni.com/idnet.

About National Instruments

National Instruments (www.ni.com) is transforming the way engineers and scientists design, prototype and deploy systems for measurement, automation and embedded applications. NI empowers customers with off-the-shelf software such as NI LabVIEW and modular cost-effective hardware, and sells to a broad base of more than 30,000 different companies worldwide, with no one customer representing more than 3 percent of revenue and no one industry representing more than 15 percent of revenue. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, NI has more than 5,000 employees and direct operations in more than 40 countries. For the past 12 years, FORTUNE magazine has named NI one of the 100 best companies to work for in America. Readers can obtain investment information from the company's investor relations department by calling (512) 683-5090, e-mailing nati@ni.com or visiting http://www.ni.com/nati.

CVI, LabVIEW, National Instruments, NI and ni.com are trademarks of National Instruments. The mark LabWindows is used under a license from Microsoft Corporation. Windows is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and other countries. Other product and company names listed are trademarks or trade names of their respective companies.

Reader Contact: Ernest Martinez, (800) 258-7022

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