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It's interesting to me that your approach to automated testing includes a real, physical device. How well do you think your robot offering is positioned versus

It's interesting to me that your approach to automated testing includes a real, physical device. How well do you think your robot offering is positioned versus fast and free virtual automated testing within an Android/iOS simulator? I assume there must be some material advantage to testing on a real device, but I don't know a lot about the domain. What happens if the layout of the app changes slightly- are your testing programs purely based on physical coordinates?

hugs 10y ago
Example #1: How do you automate a test for what happens to your streaming music app when a phone call comes in? (This was a real scenario a client couldn't figure out how to automate any other way.) Example #2: You're a car company and have a mobile app that controls parking your car. You have a business (and possibly legal) requirement to test the app with the same unmodified hardware your users will use. (So you can't only use simulators.) Example #3: You make wearables that measures steps taken. How do you test the wearable to make sure it's logging steps properly? (You shake it with a robot.) Every company that makes a device (phone, car, wearable, anything with a touch screen, etc) has a secret robot testing lab. I didn't know all of these examples were real business problems (with the associated big enterprise budgets) when I started the project. But after enough of these conversations, I realized there's something there.
- benliong78 10y ago
  At the Previous Company I was in (Bindo Labs) I was coding the NFC Payment Integration with the Point of Sales System (POS). One of the requirements for the integration was that every transaction has to happen less than 0.5 seconds including the hardware card-reading part. So I ended up having to wave the card around the reader all day testing it. I thought of building a automated testing robot but tight deadline prevented me from diverging, and it didn't end up happening. I'd be curious to know how big a business it is for you now that it's 5 years past. Sounds like a very interesting case-study.
  - hugs 10y ago
    We're now at about $150k in bookings halfway through the year. Last year was $30k revenue for the entire year. I hope the numbers keep going up or this will have to go back to side-project status!
    - coverband 10y ago
      In that case, my I humbly suggest turning the tapster.io landing page to a more informative experience, rather than expecting visitors to click over to the Tindie project site?
pjc50 10y ago
I've been involved in automated testing with a robot for point-of-sale systems. The pinpads are secure devices, so there's no way of injecting commands, and there's no adequate bug-compatible simulator. It's cute watching it carefully insert a card, type in the PIN, remove the card, etc.

hugs 10y ago

Example #1: How do you automate a test for what happens to your streaming music app when a phone call comes in? (This was a real scenario a client couldn't figure out how to automate any other way.) Example #2: You're a car company and have a mobile app that controls parking your car. You have a business (and possibly legal) requirement to test the app with the same unmodified hardware your users will use. (So you can't only use simulators.) Example #3: You make wearables that measures steps taken. How do you test the wearable to make sure it's logging steps properly? (You shake it with a robot.) Every company that makes a device (phone, car, wearable, anything with a touch screen, etc) has a secret robot testing lab. I didn't know all of these examples were real business problems (with the associated big enterprise budgets) when I started the project. But after enough of these conversations, I realized there's something there.

benliong78 10y ago
At the Previous Company I was in (Bindo Labs) I was coding the NFC Payment Integration with the Point of Sales System (POS). One of the requirements for the integration was that every transaction has to happen less than 0.5 seconds including the hardware card-reading part. So I ended up having to wave the card around the reader all day testing it. I thought of building a automated testing robot but tight deadline prevented me from diverging, and it didn't end up happening. I'd be curious to know how big a business it is for you now that it's 5 years past. Sounds like a very interesting case-study.
- hugs 10y ago
  We're now at about $150k in bookings halfway through the year. Last year was $30k revenue for the entire year. I hope the numbers keep going up or this will have to go back to side-project status!
  - coverband 10y ago
    In that case, my I humbly suggest turning the tapster.io landing page to a more informative experience, rather than expecting visitors to click over to the Tindie project site?

pjc50 10y ago

I've been involved in automated testing with a robot for point-of-sale systems. The pinpads are secure devices, so there's no way of injecting commands, and there's no adequate bug-compatible simulator. It's cute watching it carefully insert a card, type in the PIN, remove the card, etc.