The Android device farm that fits in a (cloudy) pocket

Android developers are facing a common problem: how to test our applications on many devices without sacrificing too much time or money? Could we use remotely all the devices inside the company with the continuous integration system? Maybe thanks to a low cost device farm that fits into a pocket?

Android developers are facing a common problem: how to test our applications on many devices without sacrificing too much time or money?

• How to build and test automatically our applications for each commit?
• How can we find those devices inside the company, whatever its size may be?
• Could there be a directory somewhere that lists those available devices?
• Could we use a device remotely and share it with other developers as if it were in the cloud?

What if you could answer all these questions with the help of a low cost device farm that fits into a pocket? A pocket full of clouds…

Poddingue, our proposal, aims to tackle this problem thanks to Docker, HypriotOS, Armbian, Gitlab CI and OpenSTF. It’s an internal solution made of OSS readily available, but it has not yet been publicly announced as a whole.

This is a feedback about an idea on its way to production, a long journey full of different feelings : horror, happiness, suspense, boredom…

Why should I come?

This presentation won’t be too technical ; it is opened to anybody who has an interest into Android, exotic hardware or continuous integration, as long as you can stand a bad sense of humour. At the end of the talk, you should know how to build your own cloudy pocket farm of Android devices and how to use it to test your applications within your ci pipeline.

And as I am cheap, you will also be surprised at how little money you need to build it.

I had a blast when I gave this talk at the 2018 Techforum eXplore conference. I got the best teaser award for day #2 and got very good comments at the end:

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Comments:

Very good & interactive
Nicest kitten
Great presentation
Fun & nice to have a different approach vs habits with hardware
A real passion

The subject I address is not new (I’m not the only one using OpenSTF), but the way I use it with the hardware I chose is innovative.

This is a feedback on experience, but there are quite a few technical takeaways.

For this talk, I just need a way to display my PowerPoint file, and an audience.