Page 1 of 1

Recommended connection Type for Android/iOS Devices ?

Posted: Wed Apr 12, 2017 10:21 am
by WuBu
Hello, what is your experiance and recommendation to connect Android/iOS-Devices -

WiFi ?
USB-Hub-Connector ?
Direkt to PC-USB ?

Which one provides best performance ?

Connecting to USB we have seen Problems with enhanced tests when running out of power. USB seems to supply not enough power to the device - is there any best practice ?

Re: Recommended connection Type for Android/iOS Devices ?

Posted: Wed Apr 12, 2017 8:13 pm
by tvu
You can only instrument and deploy an iOS app via USB. So if you're doing iOS automation then it must be connected via USB. I am not sure if it's the same for Android. We plug our iPad into a powered USB hub to supply it enough power to stay on. We run our automation via WiFi.

We still have issues where our RunTime machines will lose connection to our device during an automation run. It occurs when we run via USB or WiFi. It's an on-going issue and we have yet to figure out a solution.

We do find that running the automation via WiFi is more reliable than USB.

Hope that helps.

Re: Recommended connection Type for Android/iOS Devices ?

Posted: Thu Apr 13, 2017 9:08 am
by WuBu
Thanks for your comment. Loosing WiFi-connection is exactly our main issue why I was asking for experiance on e.g. USB-Hub-Connectors. With Android it´s the same issue while 2.4 Ghz is worse than 5 Ghz. Loosing time because of such issues is unacceptable for us. Out IT has tried everything to stabilize the Wifi-Connection, but it occurs again and again.

Re: Recommended connection Type for Android/iOS Devices ?

Posted: Thu Apr 13, 2017 6:44 pm
by tvu
Does your connection issue happen when you're testing via USB? Just wondering how do you know it's a connection WiFi issue?

For us, we have a custom code that navigates our app back to the home screen. I have it setup to take a snapshot of the app at key points. If I get the snapshot then I know I can communicate with the app, but the repo item wasn't found for some reason. If I don't get a snapshot then either the app crashed or I lost connection.

From time to time, we find that Ranorex would stop finding the app in the middle of the automation. The app is running and you can manually interact with it just fine, but Ranorex won't be able to find it with the current EXE running. If we open up Studio on another computer, we would be able to look at the app in Spy just fine. Ranorex can find the device again if we close down the EXE and run it again. It's like the current EXE gets corrupted somehow.