How to fix PyVISA 'Found a device whose serial number cannot be read. The partial VISA resource name is: USB0::[...]::[...]::???::0::INSTR'

Problem:

You are trying to list available resources using PyVISA e.g. using

import visa
rm = visa.ResourceManager()
print(rm.list_resources())

But when you try to run it, you see an output like

Found a device whose serial number cannot be read. The partial VISA resource name is: USB0::6833::3601::???::0::INSTR
()

Solution

Even though PyVISA doesn’t tell you that exactly, this is just the bog-standard Linux USB permission problem. We already provided a generic solution in How to fix ALL USB permission issues on Linux once and for all.

Excerpt from this post (see there for details on why it works):

Run this in your favourite shell:

wget https://techoverflow.net/scripts/udev-install-usbusers.sh | sudo bash -s $USER

This will print:

SUBSYSTEM=="usb", MODE="0666", GROUP="usbusers"
USB device configuration has been installed. Please log out and log back in or reboot

then log out and log back in (or close your SSH session and log back in).

In case this doesn’t work, reboot!

After that, your PyVISA script should work as intended and should print e.g.

('USB0::6833::3601::DL3A204800938::0::INSTR')