Test Harness: Continuous Testing on Hardware
summary
A fully automated board farm runs continuous hardware tests on every commit or PR: artifacts from Artifactory get pulled, flashed and validated, and results post back to the commit. The stack uses Jenkins, Docker containers, NetBox-sourced configs, JFrog Artifactory, ElasticSearch/Cibana and a custom Nebula agent for network/UART/JTAG control; PI-ADI and MATLAB tests exercise 18 FPGA carrier nodes against 110+ supported parts. Implemented per-board locking, SD-card-mux recovery and telemetry dashboards; current technical debt is a monolithic Jenkins shared library and brittle board recovery, so Kubernetes and refactoring are next.
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chapters (23)
- 0:00Hardware test harness intro
- 1:46Speaker background
- 2:51Hardware/software overview
- 4:14Automation challenges
- 6:22Existing tools limitations
- 7:24Test harness design
- 10:35PI ADI for validation
- 11:59Nebula tool
- 13:52Test results reporting
- 15:17Netbox for board management
- 17:10Pipeline walkthrough
- 21:26Test harness evolution
- 22:51Automation helpers
- 24:15Plug-in test support
- 25:39Testing scope and levels
- 26:20Technical debt and refactor
- 27:22Scaling with Kubernetes
- 27:45Documentation gaps
- 28:05Q&A: Developer access
- 30:57Q&A: Nebula licensing
- 31:44Q&A: Rebuilding today
- 33:56Q&A: Connector design
- 34:18Q&A: Lab Grid future
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