AUTOMATIC HARDWARE TESTING USING

PYTHON
Submitted by
R YUVARAJA
(Reg No: 13PEES1005)
PROJECT REPORT
Submitted to the
SCHOOL OF ELECTRICAL & COMPUTING
in partial fulfilment of the requirements
for the award of the degree of

MASTER OF TECHNOLOGY
IN
EMBEDDED SYSTEM TECHNOLOGIES
VEL TECH Dr.RR & Dr.SR TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY
AVADI: CHENNAI 600 062
JAN 2016

BONAFIDE CERTIFICATE

Certified that this project report titled AUTOMATIC HARDWARE TESTING USING
PYTHON is the bonafide work of R.YUVARAJA (13PEES1005) who carried out the
work under my supervision. Certified further, that to the best of my knowledge the work
reported here in does not form part of any other project report or dissertation on the basis of
which a degree or award was conferred on an earlier occasion of this or any other candidate.

SIGNATURE

SIGNATURE

Mr. K.BHASKAR M.Tech(PHD)

Dr. CHANDRASEKAR,

PROJECT SUPERVISOR

HEAD OF THE DEPARTMENT

DEPARTMENT OF ECE

DEPARTMENT OF ECE,

VEL TECH UNIVERSITY,

VEL TECH UNIVERSITY,

AVADI, CHENNAI-62.

AVADI, CHENNAI-62.

ii

CERTIFICATE OF EVALUATION

S.

COLLEGE NAME

: VEL TECH RANGARAJAN Dr. SAGUNTHALA R&D

INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

BRANCH

: EMBEDDED SYSTEM TECHNOLOGIES

SEMESTER

: V

NAME OF THE
STUDENT

TITLE OF THE
PROJECT

NAME OF THE GUIDE

No.

R.YUVARAJA

AUTOMATIC HARDWARE
TESTING USING PYTHON

Mr. K BHASKAR M.Tech (Ph.D)

The report of the Project Report submitted by the above student in partial fulfilment for the
award of Master of Technology in VLSI DESIGN of VELTECH DR.RR & DR.SR
TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY for the viva-voce examination held at VELTECH DR.RR &
DR.SR TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY on ______________, has been evaluated and
confirmed to be reports of the work done by the above students.

INTERNAL EXAMINER

EXTERNAL EXAMINER
iii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I express my deepest gratitude to our respected Founder Chancellor and President

of VEL TECH Dr.RR & Dr.SR Technical University Col.Prof.Dr.R.RANGARAJAN
B.E.(ECE),
B.E.(MECH),
M.S(AUTO),
D.Sc.,
and
Founder
President
Dr.SAGUNTHALA RANGARAJAN M.B.B.S., and Managing Trustee &Vice President.
I am very thankful to our beloved Chancellor Dr.R.P.BAJPAI B.E, D.Sc., FIETE,
Ph.D.(IIT), for providing me with an environment to complete my project successfully.
I am grateful to our beloved Vice Chancellor Prof. Beela Satyanarayana,
B.E(MECH), M.E(MD), M.E(IE), M.Tech(CSE), Ph.D. (IIT, Delhi), for providing me
with an environment to complete my project successfully.
I am obligated to our beloved Registrar Dr. E. KANNAN, M.E., Ph.D., for giving
his valuable guidance to complete my project successfully.
I also express my deep sense of gratitude to my beloved Dean SoE&C
Prof. Dr.R.M.Suresh M.Tech.,Ph.D., for providing immense support in all my endeavors.
I am thankful to our esteemed Director Academics Dr. Koteswara Rao, Ph.D., for
providing me wonderful environment to complete my project successfully.
It is great pleasure for me to acknowledge the assistance and contributions of our
Head of the Department Dr. Chandrasekar
, for his assistance and useful
suggestions, which helped me in completing the project work, in time for being instrumental
in the completion of my project with his encouragement and unwavering support during the
entire course of this project work.
I am thankful to our Project Co-ordinator and Project Supervisor
Mr. K.BHASKAR M.Tech,(Ph.D) for his continuous support to complete our project work.
I would also thank all the staffs in our department for their guidance to finish this
project successfully. We also like to thank all our friends for their willing assistance. Words
never what we owe to our beloved parents for everything that they have done for us.

iv

AUTOMATED HARDWARE TESTING USING PYTHON

ABSTRACT
Automation hardware testing is efficient and less time consuming as compared
to manual testing. Testing is still mainly carried out manually by engineers, consuming a lot
of time and effort. We propose an automatic hardware test system that can substantially save
engineers time in testing. So we created a Embedded test hardware interact with python
software to locate the bug in DUT. Python test script can download the test cases to the target
system one by one, receive test output, compare with specifications then verify it, and
generate log files. Log files inside test steps results are stored as PASS/FAIL. Its a cost
effective test system for SS Electronic hardware manufacturers.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
S.NO

PAGE
NO

TITLE

ABSTRACT
LIST OF ABBREVATIONS
1

v
viii
1

INTRODUCTION
1.1 Purpose of Hardware Testing
1.2 Hardware Testing
1.3 Protocols handling to test
1.4 Automated hardware test system

1
2
3
3

4
4
4
4

LITERATURE SURVERY
2.1 Testing for Quality Control
2.1.1 Advantages
2.1.2 Disadvantages

5
5
6

2.2 Visual Inspection

2.2.1 Advantages
2.2.2 Disadvantages
2.3 Automatic Optical Inspection
2.3.1 Advantages
2.3.2 Disadvantages

6
6
6
7
7
7

2.4 No Testing
2.4.1 Advantages
2.4.2 Disadvantages

7
7
7

2.5 Manual Testing

2.5.1 Advantages
2.5.2 Disadvantages
2.6 Semi-Automated Testing

8
vi

2.6.1 Advantages
2.6.2 Disadvantages

8
8

2.7 Automated Testing

2.6.1 Advantages
2.6.2 Disadvantages

9
9
9

SYSTEM ANALYSIS
3.1 Existing System
3.1.1 Manual Testing - Disadvantages
3.1.2 NI Labview ATE - Disadvantages
3.2 Proposed System
3.2.1 Embedded Test System -Advantages

4 SYSTEM DESIGN
4.1.1 DUT
4.1.2 Embedded Test Hardware
4.1.3 Python Test System
4.1.4 Test Documentation

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
5.1 Embedded Test Hardware

17
17

5.2 Hardware protocols

17

5.3 Python Software

20

IMPLEMENTATION
6.1 Python test script sample coding
6.2 PCB design screen shots

CONCLUSION AND FUTURE ENHANCEMENT

7.1 CONCLUSION
7.2 FUTURE ENHANCEMENT

11
11
12
12
12
13
13
13

4.1 Project Entire system

10
10
10
10

REFERENCES

21
21
22
23
23
23
24

vii

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

ABREVIATION

DEFINITION

VI

Visual Inspection

AOI

Automatic optical Inspection

DUT

Device under Test

AVR

Advanced Virtual RISC

UART

Universal Asynchronous Receive Transmit

PWM

Pulse Width Modulation

IDE

Integrated Development Environment

MCU

Microcontroller

ADC

Analog to Digital Converter

TTL

Transistor -Transistor logic

ATE

Automatic Test Equipment

AHT

Automatic Hardware Testing

PY

Python

MSB

Most Significant bit

SCL

Serial Clock

SDA

Serial Data

ACK

Acknowledgement

FPGA

Field Programmable Gate array

CPLD

Complex programmable logic device

viii