Sensor Connectivity & Recovery Tests

[danieltsoukup]

Goal: research & establish standard tests we can run on our sensors that ensure that connectivity is maintained/recovered after common network or software issues.

Issues can include but requires further research:

• sensor losing and regaining power,
• sensor losing network connection due to Wifi turned off, weak connection, etc.

Todo's:

• collect info from our current users on why sensors are going offline (could be a Slack thread)
• research IoT software testing
• plan for running these test in a reproducible manner: is there a software we can mock up a wifi host that can simulate such network issues?

[danieltsoukup]

Notes from @gabesawhney :

The particular situation that I've observed is that sometimes when a sensor experiences a power outage, it doesn't successfully restart when power is restored. Manually power-cycling is all that's required to get it back online, but my hope would be that it comes back online by itself.

So tests might be:

A: Power-cycle the device while watching the console, multiple times, maybe varying the length of the outage (and including super short outages)
B: Power-cycle the device while watching the console, multiple times, where wifi is unavailable when power is restored (for a scenario where the AP takes longer to recover from the power outage than the sensor does, which seems likely)
C: Power-cycle the device while watching the console, multiple times, where wifi is available when power is restored, but internet connectivity isn't (:shrug::skin-tone-4:)

We've talked about monitoring wifi signal strength, since at least some users have experienced challenges with low wifi signal strength (specifically in condos with thermal windows which, incidentally, block wifi). If/when
Clyne adds that code, we could run some tests to see how it performs in various conditions.