Announcing the stb-tester camera for TVs and mobile devices

[David Röthlisberger]

Our new product the stb-tester camera allows you to test the user interface of devices that don’t have an HDMI output, such as Smart TVs and mobile devices.

The stb-tester camera brings the same reliability and ease of use of the stb-tester ONE to testing TVs and mobile devices. See this video for a demonstration of the camera’s automated calibration and of a test script that validates content playback on a mobile device.

For more information and pricing, please contact sa...@stb-tester.com.

Kind regards,

David Röthlisberger

Stb-tester.com Ltd.

--

Stb-tester.com Ltd is a company registered in England and Wales.

Registered number: 08800454. Registered office: 33b Aliwal Road,

Battersea, London, SW11 1RB.

[Robert G]

Hi Dave,

I'm glad to see that you've integrated the stbt-tv functionality so well into the stb tester one interface.

I've used this technology from the very beginning for testing SmartTVs and the calibration of cameras works like a charm. Just make sure that the light quality of your lab stays roughly the same over the day and night and no direct reflections from any light source should be visible on the screen.

Best wishes,

Robert

[Ken Su]

Hi David,

Really exciting news! Great feature!

And I have some questions after watching the video. 

1. It seems that the calibration process will be automatically triggered. My question is do we need to install anything beforehand like a calibration app or acutally the device only need to display the calibration image. 
   
2. As the video Does this mean we can basically do the same to other devices without HDMI output, say a Samsung TV? Can we use it in such a way: Camera => Image calibration => Control by Inffered

Thank you so much.

[David Röthlisberger]

On Thu, Dec 15, 2016, at 07:49 AM, Robert G wrote:

I've used this technology from the very beginning for testing SmartTVs and the calibration of cameras works like a charm. Just make sure that the light quality of your lab stays roughly the same over the day and night and no direct reflections from any light source should be visible on the screen.

Thanks for the positive experience report Robert!

To protect from light reflections we provide a box like this, that has the camera & server built in:

[David Röthlisberger]

On Fri, Dec 16, 2016, at 06:49 AM, Ken Su wrote:

1. It seems that the calibration process will be automatically triggered. My question is do we need to install anything beforehand like a calibration app or acutally the device only need to display the calibration image. 
   

Hi Ken,

We provide the calibration video, you just need to play it full-screen on the device. No app is required on the device. You can put the video on a USB stick or you can tell the TV to play it directly from http://stb-tester.com/calibration/chessboard.mp4 .

2. As the video Does this mean we can basically do the same to other devices without HDMI output, say a Samsung TV? Can we use it in such a way: Camera => Image calibration => Control by Inffered
   

Yes, this is intended primarily for testing TVs, and you can use infrared for the remote control.

[tijo george]

Hi David,

what you mean by the 'server' in 'Camera & Server built-in'.

How to give the input signal to the phone? shall we need to start an Appium server before running the tests. Or will it use the same STBT Python library functions to do the user actions like, Swipe, tap etc.

regards,

Tijo

[tijo george]

Hi David,

So STBT-Camera = STB-T One Device + A HD Camera setup . is my understanding rt?

If so , can i make the same setup just by connecting a HD camera pointing to an android device to the STB-T One device and can i control the device by sending the ADB commands from STB-T One through USB cable connected to the device.

regards,

Tijo

[David Röthlisberger]

On Fri, Mar 31, 2017, at 10:40 AM, tijo george wrote:

So STBT-Camera = STB-T One Device + A HD Camera setup . is my understanding rt?

If so , can i make the same setup just by connecting a HD camera pointing to an android device to the STB-T One device

Hi Tijo

The "Stb-tester Camera" is a different product than the "Stb-tester ONE".  It includes a PC appliance similar to the Stb-tester ONE but it needs different software to process the video feed from the camera, do the calibration, etc.  The user interface looks similar and it can run the same test scripts, but they are two different products.

You can't just plug a camera into the Stb-tester ONE device.  Furthermore most USB cameras aren't really reliable enough for 24x7 testing.

How to give the input signal to the phone? shall we need to start an Appium server before running the tests. Or will it use the same STBT Python library functions to do the user actions like, Swipe, tap etc.

You can run Appium if you want, or you can use the stbt.android Python library.

[tijo george]

Thanks David,

Can we connect the HDMI output of a camera as the input to STBT-One device and send control signals from the STBT-ONE device to Phone via USB cable using the  stbt.android Python library?

regards,

Tijo

[David Röthlisberger]

On Fri, Mar 31, 2017, at 12:56 PM, tijo george wrote:

Can we connect the HDMI output of a camera as the input to STBT-One device and send control signals from the STBT-ONE device to Phone via USB cable using the  stbt.android Python library?

Hi Tijo

You could do that in theory, but in practice it won't work well enough for test automation. There won't be any calibration or correction, so the size & shape of the UI will look different every time you move the camera. This means that you would have to re-capture all of your reference images every time you move or bump the camera or the device-under-test. You will also have problems with focus, brightness, flickering, etc etc etc.  It has taken us a lot of work to solve all of these issues, and that is the value you get when you buy our "Stb-tester Camera" device.

Kind regards,

David Röthlisberger

Stb-tester.com Ltd.

--

Stb-tester.com Ltd is a company registered in England and Wales.

Registered number: 08800454. Registered office: 33b Aliwal Road,

Battersea, London, SW11 1RB.

[tijo george]

thanks David for the clarifications

with regards,

Tijo

[tijo george]

Hi David,

In this article you are specifying one more option , using USB:

https://stb-tester.com/blog/2017/02/21/testing-video-playback-on-mobile-devices

In this case we will connect the Android Phone with stb tester One device using USB cable. And we will send the control signals (Swipe, Tap) through USB rt?

Then i cannot see the Device output in Web interface rt? So for the image comparison and all, how we take the images to be compared from the device?

in that case can i connect the a camera output to STBT tester which is projected to Android Phone?

with regards,

Tijo