Using Elixir to Test TVs At Scale (with Dave Lucia)

Integration testing is always a tricky thing, fraught with problems setting up the right environment and attempting to control the system’s state. That’s particularly true when you’re dealing with a mix of software and hardware, and even worse when you don’t have control of what the hardware can do.

This week I’m joined by Dave Lucia of TVLab’s, who’s building systems for testing television software at scale, and it’s a problem that needs a huge variety of techniques to crack it. He’s using cameras, real time video processing, Erlang & Elixir and a host of other tools to make it possible to test a fleet of televisions on demand.

Sometimes good systems revolve around a single big idea; this time it’s a large combination of solutions, coordinated by the BEAM, that gets the job done.

TVLabs: https://tvlabs.ai/
Flipper Zero: https://flipperzero.one
ATSC 3.0 “NextGen TV”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATSC_3.0

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0:00 Intro
3:04 From Bloomberg To Televisions
7:54 What's The TV Developer Experience Like?
12:02 Who Are The Users?
13:47 How Do You Automate Television Testing?
21:54 Automating TV Controls
26:20 Automating Power Systems
32:59 Why Mix Docker And The BEAM?
37:42 Turning One Box Into A Fleet
47:09 UI Testing Isn't Perfect, But…
52:57 Dealing With TV Versions
55:59 Scheduling Tasks Across A Fleet Of TVs
1:07:08 Why Elixir?
1:11:5 What's Left To Solve?
1:16:05 Outro