Rolling your own Android Emulator

In certain situations the emulators provided just don’t cut it.      It is actually relatively simply to create your own by just using an x86 image of Android.   It is also possible to add additional features to the emulator for testing by virtue of daemons installed.

 

Download Android X86 iso image of choice from http://www.androidx86.org/download

 

Boot ISO in Hyper Visor of choice. (Android will work in VMWare, VirtualBox and Hyper-V) 

 

Install any GPS, Accelerometer, orientation etc spoof daemons of choice

 

Android Debugger Bridge  (ADB)

 

Once Android is booted (first time), run terminal (on Android) and issue commands below

o setprop service.adb.tcp.port 5555

o stop adbd

o start adbd

o or adb tcpip 5555 

 

From the development PC (issue commands via CMD – adb can be found in platform-tools folder in you Android SDK folder):

o adb connect [Android emulator ip address]

 

If the ip not known from Android terminal command: (busybox ifconfig)  Connect as normal from Visual Studio.   Should appear as Hyper Visor name, ie VMWare etc