Hello, and welcome to Getting Started with BenchVue.
In this tutorial, I m going to cover the basic capabilities of BenchVue, including getting
a screenshot from and instrument and exporting it, doing a data log with an instrument and
exporting the data, creating an arbitrary waveform from data captured on an oscilloscope,
accessing technical documents and application notes and videos and finally how to access
BenchVue with your Android or iOS device.
So let me get started.
If you refer to the bottom of the screen, to what we call the instrument panel, you
can see I m connected to four instruments, a spectrum analyzer over LAN, a DMM via GPIB,
a function generator and an oscilloscope, both through USB.
Now BenchVue will automatically detect and connect to instruments through GPIB and USB.
For LAN and RS232, you need to manually configure those instruments using a visa configurator
that you can access through this IO icon.
Once you configure the instrument, it will always show up in the future when you open
BenchVue.
For more information, see the tutorial Connecting your Instruments to BenchVue.
So I m going to minimize my instrument panel, and I have my four Bench apps, one for each
instrument I m connected to on the screen.
I m going to start each Bench app, first the spectrum analyzer, then the DMM, then the
function generator, and finally the oscilloscope.
Okay, let s start by capturing a screen shot from our spectrum analyzer.
To do that I m going to bring it to full screen, the spectrum analyzer bench app.
I m just going to press, get current screen.
There s my screen shot.
Now if I want to export it, I just go down to this icon, press export, I can export it
as an image or as an image attached to an email or in a Microsoft Word document, which
I ll do.
Bring up my Word document and you can see, not only is the screen image captured, but
also information on the instrument is also captured, so I can use this as a baseline
to start writing a test report.
Okay next, let s see how easy it is to perform a data log.
So I ll go back to the quad view, and I ll bring my DMM to full screen.
Now I can access my settings over here.
To start the data log I just need to press this start button and the DMM immediately
starts capturing data.
Let me hide my settings so I have more room to view the data.
Now I can let this run for seconds, minutes or an hour and once I m done, I just press
the stop button.
I have controls here to analyze my data, including markers.
Then once I analyze my data, I can also export it like I did with the screen shot.
I can export it as a screen shot, I can export it to Matlab, Microsoft Word, a CSV file and
also Microsoft Excel.
And here is my captured timestamp data.
Let s go back to the quad view.
Now let me demonstrate how easy it is to capture a scope trace and turn it into an arbitrary
waveform on my function generator.
To do that, I m going to select my function generator.
I m then going to go to a dual view so I m looking at my scope and my function generator
bench apps.
I m then going to select, get current trace.
Now this is going to capture the trace data on my scope, so the digitized points on my
scopes, it captures it in BenchVue.
I m going to go to channel 2 of my function generator and to turn this scope signal into
an arbitrary waveform, I can simply highlight it, and drag and drop it to channel 2 of the
function generator.
If I bring a function generator to full screen, I can see the signal that I just grabbed from
the scope here on channel 2 of the function generator as an arbitrary waveform.
Now let me show you the library tab on BenchVue.
I still have my function generator selected, so what this will do is bring up all the documentation,
user manual, data sheet, application notes and videos related to this function generator.
So for instance, I can click here and go to application notes.
I can click here and go to YouTube tutorial videos.
All can be accessed easily through the BenchVue interface.
Okay, let me go back to my bench tab, and I ll go back to my quad view.
Now I can see all my bench instruments again.
And here I want to demonstrate the mobile capabilities.
So if you download BenchVue mobile from the Apple App Store, or from Google Play, and
install it on your mobile device, you can access the instruments you re connected to
through BenchVue.
To do that, click here to enable mobile access, and then I can go here to my settings tab
and then to mobile access and I can use the IP address of my computer to connect using
the mobile device, or in the mobile app I can scan this QR code to automatically connect.