Android for Ubiquitous Computing Researchers

General installation

Your machine will need Java, Eclipse, the Android Software Development Kit (SDK) and the Android Eclipse plug.in installed. The installation instructions provided by Google are comprehensive and available here or PDF copy. The instructions for installing the Android Eclipse plug-in are here or PDF copy.

The tutorial has been tested with Eclipse Indigo (3.7) for Java EE developers, and Java 6.

Downloaded versions of Eclipse, the Android SDK and the ADT Eclipse plugin are on the USB sticks provided.

Installing the Android target package

The Android SDK only contains generic tools for working with Android. Once you have installed it you'll need to install the particular libraries we are using too.

The first way to do this is to use the android tools themselves to do the download. Described here.

  • Go to the directory where you unzipped the SDK and change to the 'tools' directory. Run the 'android' or 'android.exe' program.
  • Choose the 'Available Pakages' option and then 'SDK Platform Android 2.1, API 7'.
  • If the list of packages fails to download then try the option in 'Settings' for forcing https to http. If this fails too then see below.
  • Accept the license agreements for the proposed packages and allow them to install.
  • You might get prompted to restart adb - you should allow this

The alternative method is to install the files manually.

  • Attach one of the provided USB sticks to your computer
  • Unzip android-7.zip from android-packages on the USB stick into the SDK directory
  • Unzip the version of platform_tools for your operating system into the SDK directory
  • Open the android tool as described above and check that the Installed Packages list contains: Android SDK Tools, Android SDK Platform-tools and SDK Platform Android 2-1

Configuring the Eclipse plugin

The first time you start Eclipse after installing the Android Developer Tools plugin you will need to configure it.

  • Open the Window menu and choose Preferences
  • Choose the Android section
  • Use the browse button to set the directory where you unzipped the Android SDK
  • Click the Apply button and the list of available runtimes should refresh to include the Android 2.1 runtime

GeoTutorial links


Source code