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Getting Started Developing Android Apps on the Juno T41
This article will help you configure your desktop computer and Juno T41 with Android for beginning your application development.
In my previous article, I provided information on how to tell if your Juno T41 is running the latest version of Android, and how to install applications from a website or SD card. In this article, I will provide you specifics on getting your rugged Juno T41 and desktop computer configured for developing Android applications.
The first step in connecting your device with your development computer is to enable USB debugging through ADB (Android Debugger) on the Juno T41. Next, you will want to configure the desktop or laptop to see the device. The web location of http://developer.android.com/tools/device.html is part of the Android developer site. It provides useful information on these steps that you will need to take to configure your Juno T41 and development computer. The information that I provide below is specific to the Juno T41.
For Mac OS X no configuration is required. (But, as a side note, fastboot does not work on the Mac with the Juno T41.) For Windows, you will follow the instructions on the Google Android developer site (given above). Trimble has Android SDK and ADB setup instructions as well as Windows drivers available at android.trimble.com under Android Products > Trimble Juno T41 with Android 4.1. A Trimble account is required to access those resources and instructions for creating a login can be found at the bottom of the T41 Support page. You will need both the “Juno T41 - Android 4.1 - SDK and ADB Setup Instructions - English” document and the “Juno-T41_Windows_ADB-Driver.zip” file to configure the Android SDK on Windows.
Linux
Since Android is based on the Linux operating system, many developers choose to use Linux for developing Android applications. Linux is fully supported by Google for Android development. The following steps and sites are useful to get started:
- If you have installed the developer tools, and run ‘Eclipse’, it will create a directory called ‘.android’ in your home directory. Add (or edit) the following file to that directory:
<span>% android update adb # creates ~/.android/adb_usb.ini# now add 0x099e (Trimble) at the bottom of adb_usb.ini</span>
- Now, follow step 3 of the Android guide reference above, using 0x099e for the USB device ID.
Once you have configured everything, log off, unplug and re-plug the T41, then you should see something like this when you run ‘adb devices’:
% adb devices<br> List of devices attached<br> 42621380001 device
Note: you may be able to ‘adb kill-server’ followed by ‘adb devices’ without logging off.
Other Configurations
When the T41 screen goes blank, the device suspends, which disconnects your session. This suspend will occur even if you are debugging your application or running from the command line using adb. You will want to disable the screen blank for development by going to Settings > Developer options, and selecting “Stay awake”. This setting will keep the device active while you are connected to a development machine.
Once you have adb configured to work with your Juno T41, you can use it to install applications with the ‘adb install file.apk’. You can also obtain debugging information from your Juno T41 with commands like ‘adb logcat’ and ‘adb logcat -b radio’. Finally, you will have the required configuration completed to develop and debug applications using Eclipse. See the Google Android developer site and the Trimble Android documentation for more information on developing software for Android.
For more information about SDG Systems' Android development services, please contact us.
For more information on the Juno T41, click here.