Benchwave, a free Mac app that will help oragnise your workshop

A while back I picked up a couple of FNIRSI instruments, a 2D15P scope and an LCR-P1 component tester. Good kit for the money, but the software is a letdown: mostly Windows-only, so on a Mac you're stuck dragging screenshot files off a USB drive by hand, or booting a VM just to flash firmware.

I wanted two things fixed: get the scope's captures onto my Mac properly, and update the LCR-P1's firmware without touching Windows. So I built Benchwave to do exactly that. It kept growing from there, and it's now a full bench companion, free, and public: https://benchwave.co.uk

What it does today

Captures land in a proper library instead of a USB folder. Add a drive or folder as a Sync Location, the scope's USB share, an SD card, a camera, whatever holds your captures, and Benchwave imports new screenshots automatically. Nothing hardcoded to one instrument; it just watches wherever you point it.

You can pick two or more captures and compare them side by side, with readings plotted on a graph across the sequence, handy for before/after checks like a voltage drop under load.

On a supported Mac, Benchwave reads the numbers off a capture itself using Apple's on-device models, no cloud round-trip, and gives you a plain-English summary of what it's looking at.

Firmware updating for the LCR-P1, natively on macOS. FNIRSI only ship a Windows updater, so I reverse engineered the IAP serial protocol and reimplemented it myself. I've flashed a real LCR-P1 from a Mac with it, which as far as I can tell makes it the first non-Windows updater for the device.

There's a proper component inventory too: quantities, locations, datasheets, low-stock alerts, with categories and manufacturers that suggest themselves as you type.

Projects tie it together. Each one holds its own captures, a parts list you build straight from inventory or import as a BOM CSV, and a running set of notes. Add a part and it deducts stock automatically, and flags anything you're short on.

From a project you can export a branded Project Sheet or a customer Quote as a PDF, resell prices only, your cost and margin stay private, itemised or combined, however you bill.

Any datasheet or image you attach can be marked up, arrows, text notes, freehand, without touching the original file. If the same document is shared across several projects, each one keeps its own markup on top of it, nothing gets duplicated or overwritten.

Everything backs itself up automatically on launch, plus a one-click full export if you want a copy off the machine.

What's next

Benchwave on iPhone and iPad, so your library, inventory and notes travel with you, synced through your own iCloud (firmware flashing stays on the Mac). A cross-platform version for Windows and Linux, already in progress, so this doesn't stay Mac-only. Deeper on-device AI for reading and summarising captures. And support for more instruments beyond FNIRSI's two, depending on what people ask for.

Give it a try

Grab it here: https://benchwave.co.uk

If you've got a 2D15P, an LCR-P1, or any bench gear that dumps screenshots to a USB drive, I'd like to hear how it goes: what works, what's missing, what you'd want next. There's also a community translation kit if you want to get it into your language (Polish is already done).

Thanks for reading, and happy building.
Seb