A case study on automated testing of LED blink interfaces as part of software/hardware testing, conducted during a student internship project.

During career fairs and student meetings, we’re often asked about the kinds of projects our interns work on. This question is important because it relates to developing technical competence and engaging interns in hands-on work that will prepare them for further professions.

In the article below, you’ll find a case study prepared by our intern, Piotr Korman. The project involved creating a hardware interface using a phototransistor to convert light intensity into voltage and communicating this data to a PC via the RS232 interface. The software solution decoded various blink patterns to determine the device’s status with high accuracy.

Automated testing of LED blink interfaces as part of software/hardware testing

Introduction of the problem

When thinking of Software Testing, we usually think about applications (be it for Web, Mobile, or Desktop). However, when working in the embedded branch of software development, there is also something called a device test, where the developed software is tested running on real hardware. This test phase requires testing of (among other aspects) all the accessible interfaces, including the most unusual – “non-software” ones.

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