Created on 2013-12-16 23:42:00
How can APx retrieve a serial number from a DUT?
In this use case, a manufacturer wishes to have the serial number of each unit tested during production appear on APx reports. This can be done several ways as part of an automated test sequence.
Human Interaction
The simplest way to get a serial number for the DUT in the report is to use the Prompt for Device ID feature at the beginning of the sequence (see screen shot below). Most users would check this box and have the operator scan a barcode of the serial number at the beginning of the sequence. This way the serial number is shown in the report and also gets recorded in the CSV log file every time the sequence is run.
Alternatively, you can add a User Input step to any measurement. This information can also be inserted via barcode scanner and is entered in the report.
Automated String Comparison
Another way to get a string into a report is with the Pass/Fail measurement. In this case, before the Pass/Fail measurement a sequence step is run which causes a string (for example, the software version number) to be written to a text file. The Pass/Fail measurement can then be used to read the text file and compare it to an expected string. In the example below, we have set up the measurement to read the file Version.txt from my “My Documents” folder and compare it to the string “12345”. As you can see, the actual string and the expected string both appear in the report.
Strings returned from applications
The Run External Program step may accept a string that is written to a console window from a Console Application (e.g., a Windows CMD window). We created a console app that writes the string “Hello World”, and configured the Expected Response to be the same as part of a sequence step. The setup is shown below with a page from the report. As shown below, the string is sent to the report and is used to determine the Pass/Fail status.
Conclusion
APx supports both human and automated capture of text strings such as serial numbers. For manual input, either the Prompt for Device ID property or a User Input step in a sequence may be used. If the DUT can be queried by an application that returns the desired string (e.g., a serial number) to APx as part of the test sequence, then each DUT report can automatically contain this data by including this application as an External Program.