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Showing posts with the label devops

Micropython + LoRaWAN = PyLoRaWAN

I recently open sourced a simple Micropython library for LoRaWAN on the Raspberry Pi Pico.  (If you are interested, You can find it on GitHub .) If you are unsure what that all means, let me unpack it for you... Micropython is a slimmed down version of Python 3.x that works on microcontrollers like the Raspberry Pi Pico, and a host of other microcontroller boards .  LoRaWAN is a wireless communication standard that is ideal for long range, low power & low band width data transmission. Its based on a clever technique for making signals work well over distance, called LoRa. The library I've shared is a wrapper around the existing LoRaWAN support provided by the RAK Wireless 4200 board. The RAK4200  (affiliate link) essentially provides a modem, that can establish a connection to the network and relay messages. It uses the traditional AT command syntax (used by the modems of yore!) The Pico and RAK4200 Evaluation board (there is also a UPS under the Pico there - that's optio

Development and test environments - on demand at the press of a button (That actually work!)

“Works on my machine!” “Fails most epicly on my test system!” “Oh, wait… it works on CI but fails in Test env 3.” Sound familiar? These sorts of conversations are thankfully a thing of the past.  Wait, hold on - are you still having these sorts of conversations? That's probably because you are working somewhere where the development, test, production & CI servers are being created by people, painfully, once. Alexander the Great cutting through the Gordian knot of a particularly gnarly micro-service deployment. You set up your laptop, you pray to the god of operating system patches and upgrades and hope that nothing ever changes (ever). You're gonna be the last person in the team to take that new Mac OS upgrade - let the rest of the team run through those mine fields first. And the test systems? Last time you asked for a new one of those your programme manager ended up on new & stronger heart meds. Luckily, there are tools that can help.  Gitpod , for example, allows you

Avoiding Wild Goose Chases While Debugging.

When I’m debugging a complex system, I’m constantly looking for patterns. I just ran this test code... What did I see in the log? I just processed a metric $^&*-load of data, did our memory footprint blip? I’m probably using every freedom-unit of screen space to tail logs, run a memory usage tool, run an IDE & debugger, watch a trace of API calls, run test code… And I’m doing this over and over. Then I see it. Bingo, that spike in API calls hits only when that process over there jumps to 20% processor usage when the app also throws that error. Unfortunately, I may have been mistaken. On a sufficiently complex system, the emergent behaviour can approach the appearance of randomness. Combinatorial explosions are for real, and they are happening constantly in your shiny new MacBook. My bug isn’t what I think it is. I’m examining so many variables in a system with dozens of subsystems at play, it's inevitable I will see a correlation. We know this more formally as

DevOps and Software Testing.

Most of my recent work has been with DevOps teams. While in one sense DevOps is another evolution in software development. It also introduces some new skill requirements and responsibilities into the daily routine of a tester. These diagrams tend to confuse people, hence the video... I've created a short video to highlight some of these changes and the opportunities they bring. It's not an exhaustive view of DevOps but it gives a highlight of what you could be working with. While DevOps isn't a panacea to our software development problems, I have found that empowering teams with the ability to build and use the tools they need, can rapidly improve team morale and productivity.