Implementing hardware interface tests

[fschrempf]

Hi, I'm wondering what is the best way to implement tests for hardware interfaces like RS232, RS485, CAN, etc. Our lab setup features a DUT and a RPi that runs the exporter and also acts as remote communication companion for the DUT using USB adapters, etc. to provide the necessary interfaces.

As far as my limited understanding goes, one could:

1. use labgrid console drivers in pytest to run shell commands on the DUT and the RPi to send some data and check the results on the other side.
2. use labgrid to copy some test scripts/programs to the DUT and the RPi and run them through pytest and check the return code.
3. write labgrid drivers to interact with the interfaces on the DUT and the RPi.

Are these assumptions correct? What is the most common/reasonable way? Are there any real-world examples around somewhere to look at?

I also wonder if there is a way to have the hardware interfaces from the DUT and the RPi forwarded somehow to the labgrid client in a way that I can directly access them as "virtual" interfaces from Python code. Python has modules to interact with the interfaces and it would make the test code much more readable and self-contained if I could just implement the tests as if I would for native interfaces on the client machine. But I guess that's out of scope...

Thanks for any help and additional insights.