Board Farm
Here is some information about board farms.
Contents
Community
At the Embedded Linux Conference Europe 2017 Andrew Murray held a BoF session titled Farming Together. The purpose of this BoF was to bring together people that are actively working on board farms to create a community, to knowledge share and to start a collaborative effort.
Add your name and contact information if you would like to be notified when an e-mail list is created, or are generally interested in this topic:
- Andrew Murray - <amurray (at) witekio.com>
- Tim Bird - <tim.bird (at) sony.com>
- Robert Schwebel <r.schwebel (at) pengutronix.de>
- Arnout Vandecappelle - <arnout at mind dot be> -- doesn't have a board farm but is interested
- Mirza Krak - <mirza.krak (at) endian.se>
- Alan Bennett - <alan (at) opensourcefoundries.com>
- Geert Uytterhoeven - <geert (at) linux-m68k.org>
- Andrea Scian - <andrea.scian (at) dave.eu>
- Kieran Bingham - <kbingham (at) kernel.org>
- Jan Lübbe - <j.luebbe (at) pengutronix.de>
- Marco Cavallini - <m.cavallini (at) koansoftware.com>
- Kevin Hilman - <khilman (at) baylibre.com>
- Bill Mills - <wmills (at) ti.com>
- Tom Gall - <tom.gall (at) linaro.org>
- Stephano Cetola - <stephano.cetola (at) linux.intel.com>
- Mike Holmes - <mike.holmes (at) linaro.org>
- Matteo Vit - <matteo.vit (at) dev.starwaredesign.com>
- Attie Grande - <attie (at) argentum-systems.co.uk>
- Roland Hieber <r <dot> hieber <at> pengutronix <dot> de>
At present the expectation is to hijack this mailing list - https://lists.yoctoproject.org/listinfo/automated-testing
Actions
- create a mailing list?
- define API between test framework and DUT controller layer?
- pduclient?
- labgrid?
- ebfarm?
- ttypersist: provides an application a fake socket for misbehaving ttys
- ttc|
- survey of existing tools, hardware, practices
Presentations
If you know of a presentation on this topic, please add it below:
- "Test Standards - Can Fuego, Lava and others agree?" by Tim Bird at Linaro Connect SFO 2017
- "Herd Your Boards, Become a Farmer" by Geert Uytterhoeven at ELCE2016
- "Automation beyond Testing and Embedded System Validation" by Jan Luebbe (Pengutronix) at ELCE2017
- Introduction to kernelCI.org
- Blog Article and Video
Best Practices
Issues/Requirements
Misc / Tools
- New horizontally scalable CI system built with Containers and container orchestration technologies in mind - https://github.com/OpenSourceFoundries/jobserv / http://connect.linaro.org/resource/sfo17/sfo17-217/
Hardware
SD muxers
- USB-SD-Mux by Pengutronix
- SD-MUX by Tizen
- MuxPi by Tizen
Kevin Hilman mentioned (at ELCE 2017) wifi SDCards as a way to handle the SD mux problem. Was he referring to something like these? http://techpp.com/2015/04/28/wifi-sd-cards-camera/
power control
- usb board with switchable power
- ykush - 3 port USB power switcher - https://www.yepkit.com/products/ykush
- Web Power Switch by Digital Loggers
relays/buttons
multi-function
- BayLibre ACME cape - power and temperature measurement with different probes (USB, Jack power cable, HE10)
- Sony_Debug_Assist_board - Open Hardware design by Sony for multi-function DUT controller (USB, serial, power, buttons)
USB mega-ports
A few people are using these:
Software
- Labgrid : http://labgrid.readthedocs.io - http://labgrid.org
- CI-RT : https://ci-rt.linutronix.de
- R4D : https://github.com/ci-rt/r4d - https://github.com/ci-rt/libr4d
- Libvirt : https://github.com/ci-rt/libvirt-debian
- Jenkins plugin : https://github.com/ci-rt/libvirt-slave-plugin
- ttc : https://github.com/tbird20d/ttc - documentation at: Ttc_Program_Usage_Guide
Notes
- spend money on USB serial adapter cables - cheap adapters sometimes drop connections and are a pain to debug
- FTDI cables seem to work well.
Farm Survey
Tim Bird is conducting a survey of Farm hardware (DUT controllers). See this page: Board Farm Survey