Develop Reference

mk808b plus Android TV dongle not present as device in device manager, can't use for development

I recently bought an android tv box (dongle) model mk808b plus which some of you might be familiar with. What I want to do is use it for development, I want to program on it using adb, Android Studio.
The problem I am facing and its not the first of its kind, I get this with all the media boxes that I tried, they dont work as adb devices at all, I dont get any device in my device manager when I connect them on the usb (not even an unknown one). I tried reflashing the android, I put cyanogen mod on it, but to no avail, it still happens. Another thing is, if I put my device in Recovery Mode it does detect an unknown device in my control panel, but never after I boot up my android os.
Now before you say I didnt enable Developer Options Usb Debugging or I didnt put my device as MTP device, I did. I checked these and the cables im using are fine.
I dont have any problem with my Nexus 5 or S5 for the matter, just when I try these android boxes that come up with these tv like custom roms.
If you guys have any idea, I'll be happy to read, I did not find anything related to this on the internet.
PS: Why not use my Nexus 5 or S5? because the app im developing is for these boxes, so testing some of the features such as hdmi connectivity etc etc is very useful to me.
Thank you,
Andi

Unfortunately I couldn't do anything, maybe it's because of the custom ROM on it, but I did find an alternative, I'm using adb on tcp ip, it seems to work after I rooted my device, still no usb adb interface.

Android tablet USB Host mode yes or no?

I trying to make a android App, that uses an usb device that need the tablet to be in HOST mode, so it can get power from the tablet. For some odd reason, this only happens every other time I restart the tablet and only if I have the power jack inserted.
So The solution I'm trying to make, is to find out after a reboot if the tablet is in USB Host mode and if not, then reboot automatically.
The tablets are rooted, so superadmin access is no problem and my reboot code is working fine, just can't seem to find anything that says how I can detect Host mode, can anyone share this knowledge with me?
Thanks in advance
Peter

releaseInterface() and close() closes the connection and stuff. I think then you should be able to getDeviceList() or soemthing.
I can't be too sure, since I used slickdev library to connect to my serial device, but this answer is based on data of this page:
http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/connectivity/usb/host.html

Android 4.0.3 smartphone as a host for a computer

Is it possible to connect an Android smartphone working a host to a computer (working as a device?) I am writing an app that is supposed to remote control a camera via smartphone. I have some trouble testing my app since emulators don't support usb connections. But when I connect my smartphone to the camera I can't really tell what goes wrong. I thought of connecting the phone to a computer so that it could e.g. display the characters it is receiving but I don't really know if it would work, as computers usually work as host to other devices, not the other way around.
Thanks a lot for any tips.

You might wanna take a look here http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/usb/host.html
Altho as mention somewhere no google io mobile in android 3.1 didnt support host mode, maybe this has changed in 4.0 which might be true basing on this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQGxckZkH2g

A computer cannot act as a Device. If you want to see what is happening on your smartphone when you connect your camera, use the
adb shell dmesg commands to look at the logs and see if the camera is being detected.

how to run wifi peer to peer application in android emulator..?

I am trying to develop an wifi peer to peer application in android(4.+).
The problem here is how to test it.
I tried to run that application in android emulator. there was no option to configure wifi in the settings menu, i also tired to enable wifi using the dev tools application form the emulator but it didn't work, And through all my googling over 3 days and i found that Android emulator is not supported the Wifi.
So i opted for androidx86 4.0eeepc using virtual box and tired to add devices both wifi and bluetooth (my app uses both bluetooth and wifi) but only bluetooth device got added and it did not work. But my virtual box detected the wifi and bluetooth devices. I just couldnt get them work with the virtual machine.
I tried everything like manually adding the addresses using terminal emulator app in androidx86 and used netcfg through the android commandline but neither of them worked.
Please suggest and guide me on the correct path to run these kind of applications that use wifi and bluetooth in android.
Thanks in advance.

First, be sure you enabled WiFi Direct in the Android settings for the two virtualbox instances:
Settings --> Wireless & Networks --> More... --> Wi-Fi direct
It has been stated as working once that hurdle was overcome, and I'm sure many have experienced the same...just be sure to enable wifi direct
I would have tried exactly what you've already tried by naturally moving from the emulator to the androidx86 project. Although unreliable, I'd recommend looking at and finagling this, if you haven't yet seen it: Android: Simulate WiFi in the emulator? and How to disable/enable network, switch to Wifi in Android emulator? most likely wouldn't have full out success but may be enough to let you know that it works or would work.
As far as testing WiFi-Direct/WiFiP2P without you yourself having a device/s, I would recommend:
Trying out some of the fiddling as mentioned above. And read through tons of logs.
You could always crowd source it to friends, or release an apk on a forum for a small group of testers.
Of course, both of those options are not ideal, seamless, or fast. So, I'd definitely hope you get VirtualBox VMs of AndroidX86 4.0 running as it should once you check that setting and pair up the WiFi APs :-)

A near future solution:
This might be something to look into in near future.
Real devices are hosted by Samsung and screens are streamed to your PC.
http://developer.samsung.com/remoteTestLab.do
According to an email responded by samsung, which I sent to them earlier.
They only have 2 devices (Galaxy Nexus) running on Android v4.0 at the moment.
Unfortunately they are not physically close to each other. (One in Korea, One in Poland)
But they are planning to upgrade existing Galaxy S2 to v4.0.
Because recently Samsung have released v4.0 upgrade for S2.
Once they done that, there will be plenty of v4.0 phones.
And you can ask them which 2 phones are physically close so you can test Wifi Direct.
--------------------------- EDIT ---------------------------------
There are plenty of ICS devices there now, which you can test P2P.
Check with them which 2 are physically near to each other.

Per the docs:
Each instance of the emulator runs behind a virtual router/firewall
service that isolates it from your development machine's network
interfaces and settings and from the internet.
You have to use Network Redirection, as described in the Developer Docs. In essence, you forward specific ports using ADB. Therefore you cannot test certain things like broadcast messages.
I have tried doing what you are trying to do, and-- while I won't say it is impossible (anything is possible in computing with enough time, money, and persistence)-- I wasted a lot of time on it. You cannot treat the Android emulator as a normal network peer-to-peer device. As far as I have been able to find, it is a fork of QEMU, and that is just how the QEMU emulator is implemented.
QEMU itself does support TUN/TAP bridging, but I was never able to get it working with the Android emulator. If you want to go that route, you may want to investigate running Android in the QEMU emulator, rather than in the SDK's emulator (I see you are already trying a similar approach with VirtualBox).
Unfortunately the best way to test a peer-to-peer networking program in Android is with physical devices at this time-- unless your app can suffice with the port forwarding method.
See Also: Issue 26:Emulated Androids should be able to communicate via TCP, and Google

(Repeating here my answer elsewhere.)
In theory, linux (the kernel underlying android) has mac80211_hwsim driver, which simulates WiFi. It can be used to set up several WiFi devices (an acces point, and another WiFi device, and so on), which would make up a WiFi network.
It's useful for testing WiFi programs under linux. Possibly, even under user-mode linux or other isolated virtual "boxes" with linux.
In theory, this driver could be used for tests in the android systems where you don't have a real WiFi device (or don't want to use it), and also in some kind of android emulators. Perhaps, one can manage to use this driver in android-x86, or--for testing--in android-x86 run in VirtualBox.

Debugging directly on the device

I don't expect you to correct my code, since it should be working, at least works on emulator. Unfortunately gives different output on the devices. My question is:
How to debug in such cases, when the device is not working as the emulator, and what could cause that (device model, a custom ROM?)
I heard some rumors some time ago, about possibility using the device instead an emulator somehow connected to the SDK. Could you also confirm or deny that?

You'll find it's not uncommon to find little quirks between devices. Many developers will have several physical devices to test their software on.
You can find information on using a physical device for debugging (including using it inside Eclipse, just as you would the emulator) on the Android website: http://developer.android.com/guide/developing/device.html

Yes you can do that. Just put your device into debugging mode, and connect it to the computer with the micro-usb port on the device. You will also need to download the drivers from the manufactures website.