Now that more jobs have a “work from home” aspect, I thought I would focus this Automation Corner on how debugging has changed over the years.
Back in the late 1990s, I first started working with customers debugging Fluke MET/CAL® procedures from my office in Oregon. The technology was pretty much new then and I think we, at Intercal, were the first company in the automation industry to remotely debug a procedure.
I started using the GoTo products. GoTo Support allowed customers to come to our website and download some software. Then, we could remotely see their screen and control the keyboard and mouse. Stepping through the procedure, we could find and resolve issues quickly—well, most of the time.
The problem back then was network speed. Few companies had a high-speed internet connection, and most people used 56k dial-up connections. I remember being the second person in town to get a cable modem installed—first on the list was the manager of the local cable company.
Back then, latency, the time it took to type something and see it appear on your screen, was murder; you really had to think ahead, type something and wait. If you made a mistake, you had to remember the backspace key also has a delay. So you would count, hit the backspace key 1,2,3,4,5 times, then type. And wait.
I was usually on the phone with the customer the whole time, asking questions about what they could see on the instruments. It worked, but often, it was so slow that I would only use GoTo Support to get an idea of what was wrong. Then, I would edit the procedure on my computer and send the customer an update.
Today, the internet is way faster! But the traffic has also increased, and the latency is still there! The problem is we are moving so much more data over the internet, coupled with some companies threatening specific ports and traffic.
We now have Facetime, WhatsApp, and several other instant chat and messaging tools, which have helped with remote debugging.
A few years ago, we started a meeting with a US-based metrology technician, who then took remote control of a workstation down in Brazil. But, the remote computer didn’t have a microphone. So, there we are using Facetime to see what the hardware was doing as we are remote debugging the software.
This is how much technology has changed over the years!
Last week, I worked on a Keysight N9030B procedure running half a world away in Malaysia. I needed to see what the hardware was doing. I could see that for the I/O Trace, the commands were getting sent, but the readings were wrong, way wrong. The remote computer didn’t have video, so the technician pulled out his phone and sent me a video via WhatsApp.
This saved me hours of troubleshooting, because I could see the UUT was not getting set up correctly. Now, I can go back and check the syntax in my VISAScript. Having written automation like this for years, I know that if the command syntax is correct, to check the order of execution. Sometimes, the unit required commands to be sent in a specific order.
We have so many tools that make remote support and debugging easier. I can’t wait to see what comes next. Maybe VR headsets and robots that can press buttons and spin knobs?
