- Healthcare and patient monitoring
- Smart utilities and smart cities
- Real-time video streaming and data from sensors
- Automated manufacturing and infrastructure
Nevertheless, testing of smart devices remains a true challenge for quality assurance engineers. Smart devices have a number of peculiarities compared with mobile or web applications and thus require more sophisticated test scenarios and approaches. With smart device testing, testing solutions need to be more scalable and flexible. They require deep expertise from the QA team.
This is even more true for smart home devices testing, which deals with unique hardware and software products that QA engineers may not have any prior experience with. Having an extensive experience in testing IoT software, the TestFort team collected some of the most frequent points that QAs need to draw attention to when testing applications for smart devices, and thus avoid some popular errors regarding their performance.
Use IoT emulators
Software that uses IoT capabilities needs to be thoroughly tested using a great variety of devices. Nevertheless, this is not always possible, because often testers do not have access to certain types of devices. This is especially true for smart home devices testing, where devices are not easy to source.
This can be solved with the help of virtual IoT emulators. It can recreate hundreds of realistic IoT devices in a real environment and help testers to perform tests efficiently, using well-known standards and libraries. It also provides excellent business solutions as it can save money and QA resources for business owners. Among the most popular IoT emulators platforms are Mathlab, Netsim, BevyWise IoT Simulator, Ansys IoT Simulator, and IBM Bluemix.
Side note: TestFort conducts software testing and quality assurance on 250 real devices. Sure, not all of them are smart home appliances and self-driving cars, but our head of QA did write a script to start the coffeemaker from his computer.
Use Cloud Computing Capabilities
Using the capabilities of cloud services, you can simulate high loads on IoT applications and check how they respond to large amounts of data. It can generate multiple streams of data and help determine how this will affect the work of the program directly on the IoT devices. Also, this method helps testers to check if the IoT application can send any amount of data to the hub, as well as check if it is possible when IoT devices have a low power status. This point requires more attention from QAs as for users it is a great indicator of the quality of IoT applications.
Pay Attention to Usability and Security
As we mentioned above, IoT devices differ from standard mobile or desktop devices. Usually, screens of IoT devices are not large, but at the same time, they should provide users with all the necessary information quickly, intuitively, and without additional effort. Graphic elements on such devices should be clear and understandable, i.e. if user wants to make a payment directly from a smart device, this should be fast and safe.
Testers need to pay special attention to the correct operation of IoT devices when it comes to blocking them if a wearable is lost. Users should possess the opportunity to block a smart device through their mobile devices or through an IVR.
Bottom Line
Smart device testing in general and smart home devices in particular are one-of-a-kind areas of quality assurance that require an equally unique testing strategy. This is why it’s always a good idea to work with someone who has extensive experience in smart device testing and can develop an all-encompassing plan for testing your solution.
At TestFort, we ensure the quality of IoT applications and taking responsibility for the final result and the quality of the work performed. We have a lot of smart devices at our disposal which helps us check your application thoroughly. We gather all possible failures and provide you with all necessary information as well as bug reports so that your IoT applications works flawlessly and you can have complete confidence in the outcome of your project.
