Building a Device Lab (2015) | Hacker News Reader

Building a Device Lab (2015)

buildingadevicelab.com

34 pointsbrudgers8 comments

So... look at Google Analytics, buy the devices you see, plug them into the wall, and buy unlocked devices? Not sure why that required an entire domain, several pages and multiple eBook formats.

It's a non-trivial problem to provide all the devices with enough electricity and network bandwidth and know how to handle soft & hard resets for devices that were never designed to run like servers. Yeah, a book isn't needed for managing just a few phones, but definitely needed as the number of devices increases.

With enough electricity and bandwidth? A phone sitting on a bench usually uses five watts at the absolute most - while charging.

Assuming you have an 1800W circuit (pretty standard) that's almost 400 phones. Even if you're in a Victorian-era home with ancient wiring and a 1000W circuit you can run two hundred phones off of that.

Also, having been to a bunch of device labs (and having my own mini one in my apartment with 15-20ish devices) bandwidth is never a problem. You typically only use one at a time, or with a shared lab maybe three or four at once.

The most effective "device lab" is a box of Androids and a few of the latest iPhones, with some chargers and a nice powerbank. You can just take the phones back to your desk and use them there.

I also have never met anyone who uses phones as "servers". In my experience you grab a phone, test something, and put it back, no? Maybe if you're before a big deploy you test on everything you've got.

I'm also not talking out of my ass here - I've made the CSS framework that's compatible with the most devices by far (including IE5.5 and certain versions of the Nintendo DS browser.) Testing it requires a tremendous number of physical and emulated devices. If you want to take a look, it's at http://mincss.com

I don't understand why anything more needed to be said past looking at Google Analytics, unless the target audience was unfamiliar with electricity.

The titled intrigued me and I thought it'd have much more information on things like automating test builds and using unique device/OS features, not how a company worth almost billions can save a few hundred dollars by ignoring 20% of its users.

I guess that is the new thing. An entire domain for your blog post. Am I missing something? Wait this is from 2015, I guess I did.

ICANN gotta make their money somehow

I imagine it helps when you've written a book to register the domain name for its title.

Oh my mistake, it looked and read exactly like a blog post.

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