- Pickering Interfaces, a provider of modular switching and signal simulation solutions for electronic test and verification, is now part of the OpenTAP ecosystem.
- OpenTAP is a community of tool developers focused on reducing the effort required to deploy automated test applications.
The core of OpenTAP is a test sequencer based on a scalable architecture whose functionality is enhanced over time by the addition of plugins proposed by the community of contributors.
The joint efforts of the community members accelerate the development, integration, deployment and optimization of test software.
The goal of OpenTAP is to facilitate the test automation process and make it accessible to everyone. The platform encourages the sharing of experiences and innovations, with the goal of inspiring and teaching partners better ways to sequence tests.
Pickering has joined other test companies in this shared open source software workshop where users can contribute and collaborate to create automated test solutions.
“OpenTAP is in line with Pickering’s philosophy of enabling test engineers to develop the best possible solutions for their own automated testing needs. We don’t want to limit the people developing the next test platform by forcing them to choose a standard form factor from a limited catalog of test equipment. That’s why we have over 2,000 modular switching and simulation products. Having an open source solution offers a similar approach to test software. It allows test engineers to create, modify and customize their test applications without paying thousands of dollars in licensing fees and being locked into proprietary solutions,” said Noman Hussain, Pickering Interfaces’ Vice President of Strategic and Software Development.
The Pickering Card Plugin for OpenTAP supports Pickering’s entire product portfolio through a single interface. The plugin comes with open source software, distributed under the MIT open source license. It allows like-minded application engineers to leverage the switching hardware. They can customize the plugin, fix bugs, make feature requests, and provide modifications and suggestions to the OpenTAP ecosystem.
