Laugh as Dave Struggles with Keysight Benchvue

Laugh as Dumb Arse Dave struggles to install a license on Keysight Benchvue and connect the E36731A
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[@JohnAudioTech]

Reminds me of my days in IT, pulling my hair out trying to get stuff like this working. Always blamed on a problem on my end, but suddenly works smoothly in the next update!

[@mikebarushok5361]

Reminds me of the struggles trying to get an HP Camera, HP scanner, and separate HP printer to all work together on a HP computer. The only way to get them to work was to remove all the drivers, and manually clean up the files left behind and the registry tree and find the one, (out of six possible) order to install the three sets of drivers. With the undocumented need to restart after one, but not the other of the first two drivers. It was really incredible that the only incompatibilities with any of those devices were with other HP devices.

[@neonsigns6721]

Dave For what it's worth you are not alone. We use keysight dataloggers at work and it has been a battle for as long as I remember. God speed to you and your journeys with benchvue.

[@espero7757]

Keysight Licensing is a nightmare … with software tools the same hussle.

[@lagia5]

lol dave seeing your fight with the software has made my morning

[@vehasmaa]

Almost like they want you to use something else and not give them money for licences.

[@Sixta16]

Software for test equipment shall come free with the test equipment. Nobody has time for this bullshit.

[@Sixta16]

And the software should work. Not like this corporate nonsense that requires three engineers to just get running.

[@KeritechElectronics]

@@Sixta16 exactly. Speaking of which, I'd rather rely on industry-standard frameworks (LabVIEW...) rather than manufacturer-specific ones. One for Keysight, another for Tektronix, yet another for Fluke... and it's getting too crowded to get any shit done.

[@pdelvod]

​@@Sixta16 Of course it doesnt work. They spend 95% of their time programming in licensing.

[@bobert4522]

@@pdelvodlol probably. It’s like how hard is it to roll out licensing framework? The user already has an account to use the software, just tie it to the account and be done.

[@landspide]

Let me guess, inability to sight the key.

[@universeisundernoobligatio3283]

Instrument software designed by bean counters.

[@Basement-Science]

Ah yes, the best combination: EEs doing UI programming. Works out great EVERY TIME.

[@mrcomment5544]

Actually it works out a lot better than the stuff most UI designers come up with. It is boiled down to functionality instead of 'cool & clever' nonsense. Most industrial controls, etc... that are widely adopted in the field because of their ease of use were designed by a small group of EEs. Now take into account the consumer grade programmable thermostat in your home, with interface designed by a UI expert, and it is basically unusable.

[@mysterious_czrs]

​@@mrcomment5544 Unfortunatel it is not the case with bench vue as we can see XD and most profesional software that I came across in my career in telecom is really bad and unintuitive, this mainly applies to programs for managing and configuring telephone exchange equipment, gsm equipment sometimes I wish they just had a commandline for everything like with network switches and routers

[@vincei4252]

This video makes my skin crawl. Reminds me so much of the bait and switch on the "free" software for Keithley SMU's that is no longer free. I dropped Altium designer because I was also tired of the yearly licensing BS and the never ending attempts to move you to the cloud. Just say no.

[@bertblankenstein3738]

You're in, but not like Flynn.

[@Okurka.]

It's like watching any pensioner use a computer.

[@markbrown8097]

Im glad im not the only one who has problems with Benchvue and other Keysight software.😢

[@slip0n0fall]

This software is what makes employees go postal

[@McTroyd]

Everyone who's ever used commercial software has experienced this, I think. My favorite experience was when Autodesk decided we'd had enough of our perpetual AutoCAD 2012 license in 2018. All of our machines stopped working at the same time. Autodesk support was able to sort it out and get us running again. Funny enough, I'm pretty sure that was right around when they announced they were going all-in on subscriptions. 🤔

[@BerrieSchuurhuis]

Some play hard to get, the Keysight app is playing hard to want 😅

[@douglasmillar9511]

Nothing but frustration. $65 per year. Meanwhile the competition is a 5 minute installation with actual instructions.

[@jacksonsee2746]

Dealing with this type of difficulty can make one feel as though they are wasting valuable time and energy.

[@frenchcreekvalley]

Well, as W Edwards Deming said, many years ago: "It's Always a management problem.". It's the management that allows the workers to put out poorly defined rules for constructing documentation and engineering and coding behind it. We used to evaluate against a notion of "user friendliness", but I guess that's out the window these days. Many of the folks out there doing the work may be great with javascript, etc., but don't possess the social skills to even understand WHAT the targeted user needs in the real world. That is still a management problem, since they either are not paying attention to what goes out the door, or have "get it out the door at all cost" as their main driver. I only have issues such as the installation problems you detailed here about twice a day!!! (am 84. I used to be pretty hard on my tech pubs department, by the way. I used to go out into the field to see for myself.

[@donondre7314]

I can feel the pain. Sometimes I wish programs were as simple as they were back in the Windows 3.0 days. These new UIs don't resonate with me. A sign of getting old?

[@ciano5475]

No, they are just bad design

[@shazam6274]

Tell us again why the >10x prices of the "Big Boy" test equipment vendors are worth it. 😂

[@abdolahamer6000]

The Bain 😂 .

[@slip0n0fall]

Last gripe, for those of us who live in corporate world this requires ADMIN to install the apps!

[@Retsalbgub]

All of a sudden it worked when you input a valid IP address

[@ralphj4012]

Yes, but sad that these so-called professional tools don't instruct you to reboot after installing a license, new version etc and don't include a simple IP scanner to help you when you mess up.

[@Damien.D]

yeah but the thing parsing the LAN for devices is broken. Good old windows XP could discover network printers without problems decades ago...

[@EEVblog]

It already knew what the IP adress was, I shouldn't have had to go in and add it manually.

[@EEVblog]

@@ralphj4012 It said the license was installed fine and it recognised it before the reboot. But another part of the software couldn't see it. That's just dumb.

[@Retsalbgub]

@@EEVblog you are right. but when it said the program was running twice i guess that was confusing it all. try deleting the license and start again and see if you have the same problem with the program running once?

[@PTNLemay]

And this is an industry standard.

[@JouMxyzptlk]

That confirms that everything that has to do with licensing is still programmed as bad as possible in all programs.... 40+ years, and no improvement. Counterintuitive, cumbersome, illogical, requiring reboot of computer or device after every change etc etc... Makes Windows Activation look like "the best ever licensing experience"...

[@slip0n0fall]

I went through this recently... they changed their license model from once activated for one app (PS, DMM etc) you could use with any serial number device. And most devices came with the perpetual app license. Now it's some other BS This software is extremely useful but boy they've really butchered the execution. The sheer number of dependancies is obnoxious

[@pradeepsrajan]

Would adding better error messages and troubleshooting help improve your experience with Benchvue?

[@Petertronic]

.eml files are plain text. Open in any text editor.

[@BlaMM74]

Restart the program, restart the computer lol. Probably take a year to RTFM!

[@KeritechElectronics]

Given our busy lives nowadays, it's a realistic timeframe :D

[@EEVblog2]

SPOILER, restarting did actually fix it.

[@KeritechElectronics]

@@EEVblog2 ah, THE Windows troubleshooting technique :)

[@bertblankenstein3738]

I was thinking about that. Turn everything off, turn it all back on. Voila!

[@Orbis92]

@@EEVblog2 I think there was a second refresh button (or is it the third after installing the license file?) on bottom left side in the little window when you click on the instrument on the right side list (lol)... But its always easier to spot those little things when you sip a coffee and just watch a video of someone struggle instead of being the person struggling...

[@markburton3306]

What happens when a hw engineer is allowed to write a user facing app.

[@markburton3306]

I should add, I recently had fun getting the Quartus free version of Questa to run.

[@jonnymakers9560]

So I have to PAY for software to be used on a piece of equipment that I purchased FROM THEM? Really...how about FU Keysight...

[@King133x]

This is why I taught myself lab view

[@KeritechElectronics]

Proprietary software shenanigans time again! Blockly/Scratch is fun though I'd rather do some "real" programming in Python, and high-performance stuff in C.

[@SomeMorganSomewhere]

Ugh, FlexLM tastes bad...

[@seabreezecoffeeroasters7994]

Turn it off and back on again ...... 😂

[@grhinson]

Adobe was the same way for me

[@chongli297]

I'm sure this software is incredibly powerful for working engineers but it has no appeal to me! Let me just write some C code or even Python to talk to the devices over a standard protocol any day!

[@philiphoeffer7442]

Exit out, & restart.

[@killinchuwaman3492]

Keysight BenchVue just sucks!

[@deadmanwalking6342]

Muriel plays hard to get. Not realy in like Flynn yet.

[@mrcomment5544]

BenchVue and all of their IVI stuff is hot garbage. I don't understand how, in this world of software that we live in, that Keysight and other companies can't design straight forward applications using modern languages & practices.

[@rpi2_user391]

On that Note with that .EML-File. Thunderbird can open those files flawlessly and extract the embedded attachments.

[@fluxion767]

Keysight is just playing hard to get :/

[@linelinelinelinep440]

i really detest benchvue its trashware wrote my own vba suite in excel to run my test equipment instead just handle the scpi yourself its a lot faster and less bloated

[@raghavendramayya9902]

You are becoming old

[@WacKEDmaN]

While (PEBKAC) { RTFM! }