Provide a configuration option for VISA controls to show Full Windows Name for Serial Ports

[travisferguson]

This idea was submitted by a user who requested I post this for them.

As of now, the VISA resource controls only allow you to select resource names without their full Windows description.  You can select individual COM ports (COM3, COM5, etc), or pick from a list of alias names if you've defined aliases for your com ports.  But, it might be nice to give the user a configurable option which will provide the additional descriptive information that you can find in Windows Device Manager.  This could allow novice users to select the desired COM port based on the actual physical layer needed for the application.  Again, I'm pretty sure you can work around this by reviewing the different COM ports in Measurement & Automation Explorer, or even creating your own aliases to surface the additional information.  But, if I'm creating an executable, to be used on different systems by novice users, then I may not want them to have to go into MAX to be able to properly identify their desired port.

So, instead of asking the user to select a COM port from a list of items looking like this...

Maybe give an option in a property page for the VISA Resource Control that might look like this (this is a mark-up)...

so that an operator can pick from a more descriptive list like what you see in the Windows Device Manager...

Thank you,

[Petru_Tarabuta]

+1. Over the years there were a few times when I thought to myself that this would be useful.