It all depends on what you propose and how far you intend to take it. If you're going to be setting up different OSes, doing various benchmarks and power profiling, it's not necessarily going to be a quick exercise.
If you just do an unboxing ... that would be quick.
You are, of course, right. It's that ole "it depends" variable. This poll was inspired by two other polls I have previously run that more or less indicated our roadtesters are spending a lot of time on a roadtest. I wanted to see how something quite familiar to a lot of people on element14, the Pi, fared as far as total time. The bottomline is roadtests take a good chunk of time for most people. My guess is (only a guess) is that time can correlate to total number of applicants (inversely proportional perhaps), among other things. Thanks for participating.
To be honest rscasny , I would say time probably scales somewhat related to the complexity or range of possibilities availed by a product. If it's a very versatile product (e.g. a development board) or a sophisticated product (e.g. test equipment), there are many things to test and better proposals usually deliver more, so people who are serious about RoadTests will deliver a proposal that makes best use of all the time they can afford to spend on it within the two month review window. That is, easily, over 40 hours - even spending 2.5 hours each Saturday and Sunday is enough to make it to that mark.
But if the products are relatively simple or straightforward, and a simple test goal is being pursued (e.g. because that's the aim of the RoadTest), then perhaps a lower amount of time would be used.
I don't usually scale my plans with regards to the number of applicants - that sometimes factors into whether the "will I apply or won't I apply" dilemma where I may choose to pass on RoadTests where I don't see myself having a good probability or where it seems oversubscribed. But once I'm putting in an application, usually I will pitch something that does as much as possible.
Just my approach ... of course, not everyone will do things the same.
To be honest rscasny , I would say time probably scales somewhat related to the complexity or range of possibilities availed by a product. If it's a very versatile product (e.g. a development board) or a sophisticated product (e.g. test equipment), there are many things to test and better proposals usually deliver more, so people who are serious about RoadTests will deliver a proposal that makes best use of all the time they can afford to spend on it within the two month review window. That is, easily, over 40 hours - even spending 2.5 hours each Saturday and Sunday is enough to make it to that mark.
But if the products are relatively simple or straightforward, and a simple test goal is being pursued (e.g. because that's the aim of the RoadTest), then perhaps a lower amount of time would be used.
I don't usually scale my plans with regards to the number of applicants - that sometimes factors into whether the "will I apply or won't I apply" dilemma where I may choose to pass on RoadTests where I don't see myself having a good probability or where it seems oversubscribed. But once I'm putting in an application, usually I will pitch something that does as much as possible.
Just my approach ... of course, not everyone will do things the same.
