Android Development On ORBIT

1. Setup computer

The ssh connection will use ​X11 forwarding to display programs on your computer that are running on a remote serve (in this case, an ORBIT node.)

If you are using Linux, ssh and the X window manager are included, so you can skip this section.

If you are using Windows, install ​Xming and download ​PuTTY.

2. Reserve timeslot

Go to the ​scheduler and reserve a timeslot

3. SSH to console

If you are using Linux, connect using ssh with the X11 forwarding flag

ssh -X [username]@console.[grid].orbit-lab.org

If you are using Windows, first start the Xming window system. Open PuTTY and turn on X11 Forwarding in Connection > SSH > X11 Now connect to console.[grid].orbit-lab.org through PuTTY.

4. Load android image

Now you need to load the android development image on a node to work on. You can use

omf stat

to see which nodes are available. To turn a node on or off, use

omf tell command [x,y]

where command is on, offh (hard power), or offs (soft power) and [x,y] is the node.

Choose a node to image (try node2-10… this is a quad-core core processor), preferably a quad core node that can handle Eclipse remotely, and load android2.ndz onto it.

omf load [x,y] android2.ndz

where [x,y] is the node.

It will take several minutes, and omf will turn the node off when it is complete.

Turn the node back on and ssh into it with X11 forwarding

ssh -X root@nodex-y

Now you are in the android development image!

5. Start Working

5.1 Application Development

You can start eclipse from the command line using

eclipse &

A new Eclipse window that is running on the node should be on your screen!

The & lets you continue to use the same terminal for more commands. Otherwise you would have to close Eclipse to do anything else. The image has Java 6, Eclipse, Android SDK, and an ARM cross-compiler.

5.2 Experiments with Android Phone

Attached to node4-1 of the outdoor sandbox there is a Evo 4g phone with ​Cyanogenmod 7.2.0 installed.
If sections 1 to 4 are applied to this node it is possible to run experiments with the phone itself that is enabled to connect through both the wimax and wif interfaces.
To remotely control the phone ​screencast is already installed in the home folder of the image (use ​this link for additional information about how to use screencast).