Feeling confused and misled by Einstar Scanner

I will start with background information. To skip to the meat and potatoes of my issue, scroll down. Yes, I created this account to post this, no it’s not a throwaway, I just wanted an account for day job work that’s separate from my personal account.

I have a very niche job at a very large, very federally regulated company. Part of our government regulations include frequent examinations in a like-for-like training simulator. That simulator must appear to the operators to be 100% accurate to the actual production equipment. If the simulator does not reflect reality, we shut down and lose money to the tune of millions of dollars per day. My job is to maintain the hardware side of the simulator, where equipment is simulated, stimulated, and/or emulated by the modeling computers. This typically requires understanding and repair off all manner of electro-mechanical HMI, as well as reverse engineering proprietary systems in order to get them to properly communicate with the modeling computers. I have an anemically small budget and often have to get creative – like purchasing used equipment from ebay rather than new. Many of our actively used components are obsolete and secondary market sources are drying up. We are also in the process of upgrading and replacing those systems on a corporate-wide basis, but in order to comply with federal law, I can only upgrade the simulator after the production side is upgraded. As such, I convinced my chain-of-command to invest in a 3d printer (I am VERY familiar and skilled with 3d printing outside of work) in order for me to create custom mounting solutions for the new equipment, specialized tooling, and obsolete components. To understand the level of bureaucracy I’m up against, it took over 18 months just to get the printer approved, and only under the conditions that it be used with an air-gapped system in order to maintain compliance with federal laws. In addition to this, the federal laws and regulations applicable to our line of work are VERY restrictive when it comes to cyber security. As an example, USB ports on networked machines are both disabled in the software level, as well as physically blocked by non-removable access restrictions, and violations of cyber requirements come with a minimum ten year prison sentence.

We had a few thousand dollars remaining in last year’s budget as the end of year approached, and I was able to convince my boss to let me acquire an entry-level 3d scanner to map areas where new equipment (and therefore custom brackets) would be going, as well as develop a “starting point” for obsolete equipment that would be best served by 3d printing replacement parts.

The meat and potatoes:

After researching entry level 3d scanners within the range of our remaining budget, we settled on the Einstar, based on reviews showing it to be significantly better than other scanners in the same price range, particularly where the software was involved. It was also advertised as being able to be setup and used in an offline mode, which would help to satisfy our draconian federally mandated cyber security measures.

I started setup of the Einstar today. The first thing it did was was look for an active internet connection in order to generate a code. Obviously, that was not able to happen. When I clicked the button to continue as a guest, it closed the software.

I did a google search of the offline setup, and Einstars own youtube video shows that the “offline” setup requires creating a file (that I can’t create when the software closes without a code) then transferring that file to another computer with internet access via USB. Using either USB or alternatives to a USB such as a CD is an absolute non-starter as that would violate our cyber policy and I’m a big fan of not being in prison.

I’ve tried several end-arounds and attempted to generate a code via a personal computer, but it still actively looks for a network connection on the air-gapped machine. Einstars FAQ suggests running the software on a networked machine and having IT whitelist their domain – the problem with that is both the software origin and the domain are registered as China, and due to our line of work, the software approval and whitelist process for Chinese origins will both take about 12-18 months.

I’m currently sitting here feeling disappointed, and a little betrayed that I was sold on an “offline setup” that is far from offline. Literally every other company I have worked with, from major Fortune 50 players to obscure one-off specialty developers have an offline mode that involves calling customer support or sending a simple email, with less than ten minutes invested total, neither of which seem to be an option with the Einstar. I’m hoping that maybe I’ve just missed something obvious, and that there’s still a workable solution that won’t involve me ending up in federal PMITA prison over cyber violations. I’m also hoping maybe someone from Shining3d sees this and realizes that there are legitimate business cases for air-gapped development systems and changes their offline activation and usage to one that’s truly offline. Any help would be greatly appreciated.