Installing and Running the Emulator in AI2

March 10, 2014 at 9:16 pm | By : Muhammad Syarif Android, Kuliah D4 No comments

If you do not have an Android phone or tablet, you can still build apps with App Inventor. App Inventor provides an Android emulator, which works just like an Android but appears on your computer screen. So you can test your apps on an emulator and still distribute the app to others, even through the Play Store. Some schools and after-school programs develop primarily on emulators and provide a few Androids for final testing.To use the emulator, you will first need to first install some software on your computer (this is not required for the wifi solution). Follow the instructions below for your operating system, then come back to this page to move on to starting the emulator

Important: If you are updating a previous installation of the App Inventor software, see How to update the App Inventor Software. You can check whether your computer is running the latest version of the software by visiting the page App Inventor 2 Connection Test.

Step 1. Install the App Inventor Setup Software

Instructions for Mac OS X
Instructions for Windows
Instructions for GNU/Linux (coming soon)

Step 2. Launch aiStarter (Windows & Linux only)

The emulator requires the use of a program named aiStarter. This program is the helper that permits the browser to communicate with the emulator. The aiStarter program was installed when you installed the App Inventor Setup package. There will be shortcuts to aiStarter from your Desktop, Start menu, All Programs and from Stratup Folder (Windows only). Linux: Every time you want to use the emulator with App Inventor, you will need to manually launch the aiStarter on your computer. Mac and Windows users do not have to do this! The aiStarter will start automatically on a Mac, Windows when you login to your account and run invisibly in the background. For Help with aiStarter, see Connection Help.

The aiStarter Icon

To launch aiStarter, double click on the icon (shown above). You’ll know that you’ve successfully launched aiStarter when you see a window like the following:

Step 3. Connect to Emulator

From App Inventor’s menu (on the App Inventor cloud-based software at ai2.appinventor.mit.edu), go to the Connect Menu and click the Emulator option.

You’ll get a notice saying that the emulator is connecting. Starting the emulator can take a couple of minutes. You may see update screens like the following as the emulator starts up:

The emulator will initially appear with an empty black screen (#1). Wait until the emulator is ready, with a colored screen background (#2). Even after the background appears, you should wait until the emulated phone has finished preparing its SD card: there will be a notice at the top of the phone screen while the card is being prepared. When conneced, the emulator will launch and show the app you have open in App Inventor.

For problems with aiStarter, or if the Emulator does not connect, 
<a href="http://appinventor.mit.edu/explore/ai2/connection-help.html"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">go to Connection Help</span></a> for information about what might be wrong.

1 2	For problems with aiStarter, or if the Emulator does not connect, <a href="http://appinventor.mit.edu/explore/ai2/connection-help.html"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">go to Connection Help</span></a> for information about what might be wrong.