OSS + ELC EU 2026

Large companies have built board farms for decades, providing both solid automated QA capabilities and short developer feedback loops.
LAVA and Labgrid have emerged as standard tools.

Although, today most small companies have not adopted those tools and practices, and too many developers spend time, constantly, on hardware set-up.
Either standard tools are unknown, or two myths circulate: that LAVA is just for large-scale scenarios, and Labgrid is complex to set up.
While at this, many create, instead, new in-house tools (wheel reinvention).

This talk aims to reverse this, by showing two portable mini board farms: one using LAVA, and one using Labgrid.
These two examples will act as comparison and demystification of these standard open-source tools, while showing common concepts.
Both examples share a common open-source CI/CD (GitLab), and the physical layout: a portable 10-inch rack, which can sit on a desk (introduced only in recent years).
Network, serial, power and cable management is done assembling off-the-shelf hardware.

Board farm adoption, at any scale, can help teams to increase ergonomics, comfort, and determinism, for stress-free development, CI, and test workflows.