FASCINATING WORLD OF IoT AND TESTING
By: Arine Baghdasaryan
Tags: QA, Testing, Software Testing, Quality Assurance, Internet of Things

Have you ever thought about how automated our daily life is now? A few decades ago, people could not even think that it could be so simplified in terms of managing everyday things. We can monitor the state of our health without leaving your home, track the necessary transport, control the vacuum cleaner remotely, and much more. Such things already familiar to us make our life incredibly comfortable, aren’t they? But to learn how to test them, we must first understand how it works.

So what is the internet of things? The Internet of Things (IoT) is a combination of vehicles, household appliances, medical equipment using embedded electronics, microchips, etc. In general, any sensors that are able to communicate with the cloud. This technology allows the user to remotely control devices over a network.

A few examples of IoT things in real implementation:

· With the help of the CitySense application, it is easy to get real-time data for outdoor lighting, and it is based on them that street lights are turned on or off.

· There are also various applications that allow you to monitor traffic signals and parking availability in the city.

· There are also many applications for monitoring patient health. Based on comparable data, services control the dosage of drugs. Applications such as UroSense can monitor the level of fluid in the patient’s body and, depending on the need, initiate fluid intake. At the same time, data can be transmitted wirelessly to a doctor’s monitor.

The following are some of the most commonly used technologies in IoT:

LoRaWAN/LoRa

RFID [RF Code] and EPC [Electronic Product Code]

NFC [Near Field Communication] is used to enable two-way communication between electronic devices and is mainly used for contactless transactions.

Bluetooth: used where short messages are enough to avoid problems.

Z-Wave: This is a low-frequency radio. First of all, it is used for home automation, lamp control, etc.

WiFi: The most used technology for the Internet of Things. On the local network, it helps to easily transfer files, data, and messages.

IoT Testing

Let’s take an example of a health-tracking system in which the device monitors a patient’s health, heart rate, fluid consumption data and sends a report to doctors. This data is recorded in the system and can be viewed as needed. It can be run remotely from any device to which medical equipment is connected.

To test this architecture, we need to consider several approaches:

messages, warnings, warnings, etc. There are no rules for a mobile phone. It can be selected carefully.

1. Ease of use:

We must make sure that we can correctly use each of these devices to us. The device must be mobile enough so that the user can easily transfer it to any place. The equipment must be smart enough to display not only notifications but also error messages, warnings, etc. The system must be able to record all events in order to provide clarity of the picture as a whole or have access to the database, also notifications should be displayed on the display and should be able to transfer data to the screens of monitors / mobile devices. Ease of use in terms of data display, data processing, input tasks from different devices should be carefully checked.

2. IoT security:

The Internet of Things focuses on the fact that all connected devices/systems operate on the basis of available data. When it comes to data flow between devices, there is always a chance that data can be accessed or read during transmission. From the point of view of testing, we need to check the security layer, whether the data is protected/encrypted when switching from one device to another. Where there is a user interface, we need to make sure that it has password protection.

3. Connectivity:

Since this is a health care device, connectivity plays a vital role. The system should be available all the time and should have a seamless connection with users. One more thing, no matter how reliable the system and the network is, it is likely that the system will shut down. We have to check the autonomous working conditions. As soon as the system is unavailable online, a warning must be given that can awaken doctors so that they can manually monitor their health, regardless of the system. Also, the system should have a mechanism that allows you to store all the data in it for a certain period. After the system enters into operation, all these data should be distributed. Data loss is not allowed.

4. Efficiency:

The healthcare system must be sufficiently stable. Testing is performed for 2–10 patients at a time and data is distributed to 10–20 devices. When 180–200 patients are connected to it, the disseminated data is much larger than they were in the test version. We need to make sure that the system works in the same way, even if such large amounts of data are distributed. We also need to check the monitoring utility to display system usage, energy, temperature, etc.

Let’s consider some types of Testing which could be used in our case: