Board Farm

Here is some information about board farms.

= 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 -  *
 * Tim Bird -  *
 * Robert Schwebel  *
 * Arnout Vandecappelle - -- doesn't have a board farm but is interested
 * Mirza Krak -  *
 * Alan Bennett - 
 * Geert Uytterhoeven -  *
 * Andrea Scian - 
 * Kieran Bingham -  *
 * Jan Lübbe -  *
 * Marco Cavallini - 
 * Kevin Hilman - 
 * Bill Mills - 
 * Tom Gall - 
 * Stephano Cetola - 
 * Mike Holmes - 
 * Matteo Vit - 
 * Attie Grande - <attie (at) argentum-systems.co.uk>
 * Roland Hieber <r hieber <at> pengutronix de>
 * Tim Orling <ticotimo (at) gmail (dot) com>

* = have seen this person on the e-mail list, or already subscribed.

Mailing list
Discussions on this topic have started at on the "Automated Testing" mailing list of the Yocto Project
 * See https://lists.yoctoproject.org/listinfo/automated-testing

Next meeting
To be determined - probably at ELC 2018

= Actions =
 * define API between test framework and DUT controller layer?
 * pduclient?
 * labgrid?
 * ebfarm?
 * ttypersist: provides an application a fake socket for misbehaving ttys
 * ttc
 * libvirt
 * r4d
 * 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
 * description: Tim proposes several areas of standardization collaboration between different Linux test initiatives
 * Slides and Video
 * "Herd Your Boards, Become a Farmer" by Geert Uytterhoeven at ELCE2016
 * [[Media:Herd_Your_Boards.pdf | Slides]] and Video
 * "Automation beyond Testing and Embedded System Validation" by Jan Luebbe (Pengutronix) at ELCE2017
 * [[Media:PRE-trunk-ELCE-Automation-beyond-Testing.pdf | Slides ]] and Video
 * 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

 * 8-Channel Opto-Isolator Board for Board Farm Control

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:
 * Manhattan Mondohub 28-port USB hub

= 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