Develop Reference

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.

Connecting ad-hoc network from android devices

I was trying to connect an ad-hoc network from Nexus S. However I realized the unpleasant news that Android does not support ad-hoc networking. After a quite amount of research, I found a work around which is:
a) Root the device and
b) Copy wpa_supplicant to system bin.
I'm totally unsure how much successful that would be. Being fairly apprehensive to further this method, I returned back to research and, unfortunately, ended up in vain.
Has anyone dealt this before? Is there any fix for ad-hoc networking in Android?

While Adnroid (at least 2.3) does not have interface for setting up Ad-hoc or Master modes, sometimes (like on my SE Xperia X10) you can just use iwconfig (need to be copied to device manually) and set it to Ad-hoc mode.
I use it sometimes, having scripts that ad-hoc mode on and off (there is even dhcp server configured on the device)

Well, I am facing the problem too. and was googling around and could not find anything worth sharing with you. Just a work around, Use ConnectifyME to create an AP in your PC and then you can use that AP (can say virtual AP) to share internet on your android device.
Hope this helps you.

There is a GUI program called Virtual router that is open source program and could be used to create WiFi, it uses virtual Wi-Fi feature in Windows 7.
For more description have a look at my post:
http://algorithmsea.blogspot.in/2012/12/ad-hoc-network-from-android-devices-i.html

adhoc isn't supported in android os but typing 2 lines DOS commands should solve the problem.
I tested this and it works.. type these 2 lines on DOS COMMAND PROMPT
netsh wlan set hostednetwork mode=allow ssid=NAME key=PASSWORD
netsh wlan start hostednetwork
I found this here : For Android users:Internet via adhoc is working without any app! : http://androiditnow.blogspot.com/2012/09/for-android-usersinternet-via-adhoc-is.html#.UXV0bUqlrGI

How to set up an ad hoc network by using the shell on a rooted Android device?

In the moment I am working with some ad hoc routing protocols (namely OLSR and B.A.T.M.A.N.) on rooted Android devices running Cyanogenmod. My tests are working pretty well. However, there is one thing which really is annoying: I can only connect to an existing ad hoc network, but not create one manually using only the phones. Right now I am using my laptop to set up an ad hoc network and to run a small DHCP server.
Do you know how to create an ad hoc network manually by using the shell on Android? I have found some methods how this should work, but none did work for me. I tried using ifconfig, iwconfig, netcfg and even wpa_cli (which seemed to be the best choice for this). But after any try the system fell back into "no wifi connected" state - even if the phone stayed in ad hoc mode for a couple of seconds while searching for an IP.
I will be so gladful if I can finally get around this problem because then I might actually use my laptop for Internet access (and therefore searching for online help during the tests) instead of using it to set up an ad hoc network. :-)

I'm not really clear on the technical details, but android-wifi-tether requires you to have a custom kernel with NETFILTER support, which I don't know if Cyanogenmod has. You might try using another open source project as an example: Barnacle Tether. It doesn't require a custom kernel.
I've started looking at the source for Barnacle for my own project. It's pretty easy to compile, but I've only just begun playing with it so I don't know the exact answer to your question.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't the old cyanogen tethering app (android 1.6, before tethering was officially offered) create an ad-hoc network for the tether clients? (I ended up using it not to tether, but just to set up a network so I could ssh into the phone from a laptop while I was playing around with USB host drivers and so couldn't use ADB.)