How to connect your hardware to Artificial#

To start running hardware with Artificial, you will need to complete these steps to create an adapter and connect to the hardware. As a prerequisite, you should have a lab with a digital twin of the hardware in Lab Builder. See How to build a Lab for assistance with that.

  1. Install your driver on the lab instrument’s PC. See Connecting to On-Site Lab Hardware for the steps.

  2. Develop an adapter for the lab that can interface with the lab equipment’s drivers. This should be based on the specific drivers’ resource libraries. The top level steps for this process are:

    1. Setup your artificial-adapter-template adapter project development environment. See Set Up a Local Dev Container.

    2. Configure the adapter for your hardware. See Hardware-Specific Adapter Setup.

  3. Launch your adapter and confirm it is connecting to Artificial and the driver by:

    1. In Visual Studio Code with your adapter project loaded in a dev container, go to Run and Debug in the left pane, and click the button to start running your adapter.

    2. Confirm your adapter is connected to your Artificial by going to the adapters tab of the correct Lab and see if this adapter is listed. For more info, consult Testing adapter connectivity. For troubleshooting, consult the troubleshooting section on Adapter Configuration.

    3. Test connectivity by starting your driver and checking your the driver’s command window to see if it is connected. For more info, see Connecting to On-Site Lab Hardware.

    4. Congratulations, your adapter can communicate with Artificial and the hardware driver!

  4. Now, you are ready to run your first test workflow to see your instrument run! Add and run a simple connectivity test workflow to your adapter by following the steps in Adding and Running a Simple Connectivity Test Workflow.

  5. This successfully completes the guide to connecting your hardware to Artificial.

What’s next#

  1. Once you are ready, you can write your own workflows by checking out the tutorial Step 2: Create your first Workflow and the other workflow sections.

  2. Deploy to a real lab: To deploy your adapter to the lab IPC see Deployment.