Sometimes DIY is a big waste of time

A few years ago, I got a cheap car for my kids to use. It was a small, white, Kia Rio hatchback. It was very bare bones and did not have automatic windows or locks. I was OK with the old roller windows but a little nervous about the locks. Without automatic locks, there is a bigger risk of locking your keys in the car. The issue is that you get used to just manually locking the car on your way out and, sometimes, forget that the keys are still in it. Occasionally, you might even accidentally lock the car while it is still running (as my son can attest). With automatic locks, you have to use the key to lock it so you are almost always outside of the car. The good news is that I had done some research (5 minutes on Amazon) to find that there were kits you could buy to add automatic locks to your car and they were only about 30 to 40 dollars. The alternative was that I could take it into a shop and they could do it for about $600 which seemed like a lot of money. 

I got the car and the kit and one fine Saturday morning, I decided to add automatic locks to the car. 

Approximately 100 hours of labor later, I had semi-working automatic locks that I had to tweak every month or so to keep them working. The problem was that I totally underestimated the amount of time it would take for an untrained person to add automatic locks. I did dumb things like drilling blind holes into the inside of the door to be able to get them attached to the cable at the right spot. For some reason, I had even wired them all backward so that the "lock" button would unlock the car and the "unlock" button would lock the car. 

I exchanged 100 hours of labor for something that would cost 600 dollars. In other words, I made 6 dollars an hour which is well below the current minimum wage. 

With automated test systems, it is often the same. Smart engineers will dive headlong into creating an automated test system not realizing that there is a much more cost-effective way to do it. At Testeract, we have both the expertise and the tools to help you create automated hardware testing systems with the right foundation to deal with any of the various changes or unforeseen requirements you might have. We can do entire systems, augment your engineering team with experts, or provide tools like TestPoint to help you create your systems the right way. 

Don't rely only on your own resources when you could save yourself a lot of headache, cost, and time by getting someone else to help you out.