PATHWAVE BenchVue License - included with your purchase?

[Wolfgang]

The deep reason is that some consulting clowns told Keysight that from now on they are not a premium measurement equipment company, but a software-centric solution provider. A consequence was that all software they make was supposed to provide their own share of the profit - i.e. no free givaways. While Keysight hardware is quite good (I use a lot) BenchVue was never stable, universal, useful and general enough to compete on the open market. They thought it is a smart move to supply a Keysight-only integration environment that would keep customers from looking for other equipment not supported by their proprietary environment. This has backfired drastically; BenchVue is so bad it acutally promotes open architectures like Python scripting. What they could have done is make a really open, industrial strength automation platform a lot better than NI, and ask good money for it. BenchVue as it is now never left the usefulness of a free giveaway.

[robint]

W, It is indeed utterly tragic hubris
The respected origins of HP for quality Bench equipment (remember those early HP scientific calculators - with RPN - Reverse Polish Notation and all those higher maths trig functions etc). They then went on rebranded as Agilent and downhill all the way as Keysight. Quite an astonishing dramatic demise. Its representative of the whole spectrum of the Industrial Instrumentation Industry in general since WW2.  Automation was the fearsome buzzword which gave way to SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) systems as all those traditional makers were amalgamated into a dozen or so advanced technical conglomerates of today.  Industry Clients demanded three things;

firstly that the Supplier would guarantee spares and maintenance for twenty years being the life expectancy of the production plant,

secondly, rugged reliability was of paramount importance as plant downtime from equipment failure could be extremely expensive (think of an offshore platform, or a PetroChemical plant),

thirdly Safety Systems had to be developed to ensure reliable shutdown as many emerging Industries involved hazardous processes - eg Nuclear Power, Chemical Plant, Energy et al.
These were very sound and conservative requirements that are often forgotten is today's - whizz bang attitude.  My special interest is the application of Lithium/Sodium Batteries and I am appalled at what I see as irresponsible industry practices using a dangerous technology - as well evidenced on Youtube by spectacular fires and explosions. The Public has been recently enabled to experiment with dc battery systems of with large huge stored energy.  These can deliver enormous current of 10-20,000 Amps under fault conditions in a garden shed of an amateur dabbler. Only professional Power Engineers have the Technical training and experience in designing such high current systems.  The fact this we are dealing with low non lethal voltage gives an utterly false level of confidence for the amateur experimenter popular on Youtube.

To help mitigate risks a reliable monitoring and logging system is necessary (as in the major Process Industries above).  So I am all the more inflamed at the utter incompetence of BV to perform its function to Industrial standards. An unreliable logging system is useless protection

No off gridders, windmillers, solar energy enthusiasts have shown much interest in comprehensive logging systems (as per SCADA).  We have the technology to scan and store data readily and cheaply but we are just not applying it and comms systems with competing proprietary protocols most certainly impact on reliability (as per KS and NI)

But what do I know        

[uer166]

just spent a couple of hours failing to do what Keysight say is simple 

Simply download the Pathwave BenchVue software, connect your instrument, then follow the on-screen directions to enable your license.

and free:

PATHWAVE Benchvue License Included with your Purchase


https://toolguyd.com/keysight-benchvue-is-a-great-example-of-an-unfavorable-approach-to-hardware-supporting-software/

perhaps its for the naive, too? the flier is Edition 1, April 2021 

I just spent 2 entire days of my billable time trying to install this heaping pile of dogshit. I sincerely hope that the entire management and development team of this piece of software gets let go at Keysight.

[Wolfgang]

Poor chap. The bottom line is:

Dont touch this crap. Learn Python and automate your stuff by yourself. At least YOU are in control.
And - no license manager needed 

[EE-digger]

I've been running BenchVue with the DMM module only.  The Spectrum module was very basic and next to useless.

The old, free DMM version is good but doesn't support all the latest features of the 34465A.  I've successfully used the DMM digitizer function a number of times to solve tough problems. 

I've had to call Keysight about 3 times in 3 years to help with various failed attempts to a) move, or b) install on other machines.  Keysight was great and did have a desire to fix me up.  In one case it went up the food chain a few notches and a fairly senior person helped to fix the problem, including re-issuing of license and removing dead hosts.

Benchvue strikes me as something no one was serious about, brings in low $$.  Maybe hand it to one or two interns for a summer.  Next summer rinse and repeat.

Right now, I'm using it for very long data logs and it's been great for that.  I can gather weeks or months of data (barring power or sw glitch) and either paw thru it on the app or export to excel.

[Wolfgang]

Agree, it feels like a pile of crap written by some amateurs.
I mean, it does have potential, iif (if and only if):

- its bug free, not like now
- the license manager stuff is simply abandoned. Its a huge piece of bloatware with no benefit for any user, and
  its creating a huge amount of trouble and implementation problems.
- It covers almost all functionalities of the supported instruments, not just some
- It has an open architecture that allows the meaningful integration of non-Keysight instruments.

Todays product is quite far from what is needed.

[Messtechniker]

For the rest of my life, I'm not going to touch
Benchvue even with a barge pole. Particularly in
connection with older puters. 5 to 8 yrs old.
Fully in line with the negative remarks stated above.
As the Germans say: "Könnste mir schenken, ich würd' dich Verklagen".
I.e. should your translator fail: "Even as a present, I'd sue hell out of you"

[HighVoltage]

If I would be Keysight, I would offer it for free without a license manager and use it to sell more hardware