Connecting to Google Android® Devices via ADB

Most Google Android devices have Wi-fi connectivity. will automatically connect to a Google Android device with Wi-fi connectivity if the device is on the same local area network (LAN) as the PC.

There is however an alternative way of connecting to a Google Android device and that is through the Android Debug Bridge (ADB), a free utility provided by Google. The rest of this document explains the steps that are required to setup such a connection.

Prerequisites

To establish a connection to a Google Android device via ADB, you must perfom the following steps on the PC where is installed:

1. Install the Android SDK.
2. If your device is not one of those automatically supported by the ADB provided driver, install any additional USB-ADB driver available from the device's manufacturer. Note: for the expert user, there is a way to extend the default ADB driver to support additional devices by adding entries to the list of supported device IDs it supports.
3. Add adb.exe to the system's PATH environment variable

To verify that the PC where is installed is properly configured, run adb devices on the command prompt. If all is well, you should get the name of your device listed as in the example below:

Preparing the Device

In order for the device to communicate with via ADB, you must perform the following steps on the device:

1. Determine if immvbsd is already running on the device.



2. If immvbsd is running, stop it by issuing the kill command against the process ID (PID) listed in the previous command: kill <PID> (Note: on some devices you may want to use the -9 option to force the process to terminate.)



3. Start immvbsd in -adb mode. Note, if in step 1. immvbsd was not aready running, you will have to manually locate the binary on the device. A common place to find immvbsd is in the device's /system/bin folder.

Establishing the Connection with

At this point should see the device. You will need to refresh the device Dropdown from the Toolbar and you should see the Google Android device listed among the available devices.

You may now design effects and play them on the Google Android device.

Restoring the Device to Normal Mode

When immvbsd is started in -adb mode, the connection to Studio through the local area network (LAN) using Wi-fi connectivity is disabled. To re-enable the connection over LAN, restart immvbsd without the -adb option (see steps outlined in the Preparing the Device section).