# Universal Library Overview

The Universal Library is the software required to write your own programs for use with any Measurement Computing data acquisition and control board. The Universal Library is universal in three ways:

- Universal across boards: The library contains high-level functions for all of the common operations for all boards. Although each of the boards has different hardware, the Universal Library hides these differences from your program. For example, a program written for use with one A/D board will work without modification with a compatible A/D board.
- Universal across languages: The Universal Library provides identical sets of functions and arguments for each supported language. If you switch languages, you will not have to learn a new library, with new syntax, and different features. The Universal Library is compatible with Windows software development packages including Microsoft Visual Studio and Visual Studio .Net, and languages such as Visual Basic, C, and Python.
- Python version 2.7, 3.4 and later is supported. The Python API is a wrapper around UL functions. The API can be imported into any IDE that supports Python, such as Eclipse and Visual Studio.

- Universal across platforms: The Universal Library provides the same sets of functions for Windows 11/10 (32-bit or 64-bit).
- Visual Studio 2019 or later is required to develop .NET applications (using Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0 or later) and to run the example programs.
- For specific Python requirements, refer to the mcculw package download page: https://github.com/mccdaq/mcculw/

## Platform Limitations

Supported Measurement Computing data acquisition hardware:

- USB, Bluetooth, Ethernet, WLS, WEB, and most PCI hardware are supported on 32-bit or 64-bit operating systems.
  PCI-DAS1000 Series, PCI-DAS1200 Series, and PCI-DAS1600 Series devices are not supported on 64-bit operating systems.
- ISA, PC104, and PCMCIA devices (PC-CARD and PCM hardware) are supported on Windows XP (32-bit) only.