July 20, 2019

Installing Atopo from source

These are notes for me to use the next time I have to do this and forget all the weird details. I fellow gave me a tablet and asked me to install atopo on it for him. I ran my script to put the maps on an SD card (it took about 2 hours) and popped it into his device. He already had installed an older version of atopo and everything worked fine at that stage. However, I wanted to install the latest version for him.

His browser (chrome) does not work. It insists on authenticating via some password I do not have. I also cannot just visit the Google "play store" (what an idiotic name), because of the same password issue.

So, let's hook up a USB cable and use that to update the "atopo" app. I fire up ADT on my machine by typing "adt" on the linux command line. Everything looks fine. Now the trick is to enable USB debugging on this tablet. This is always hidden in settings someplace. There is something called "Google settings" which is not what you want, despite the gear icon they offer for it just to confuse you. This tablet is running Android 4.4.2 (some version of "ice cream sandwich").

Go to settings. Go to system, "about Android" and tap the build number 7 times. You are supposed to get a popup saying "you are now a developer", but I never get that. However when I go back a level, I do see "Developer options" in the system menu, so this was either already enabled, or I just missed the announcement. I click on the checkbox to enable USB debugging. I plug in the USB cable, it asks me if I want to allow USB debugging (I do!) and I seem good to go.

The top of ADT has a green circle with an arrow pointing to the right. I click this. It warns me that it needs to uninstall the previous version. I say OK. Voila! The new version is now running on the tablet. I exit the app and disconnect the USB cable. I test to ensure I can still start and stop the app and it all seems OK. I reboot the tablet and test again, still OK, so I am done.

I go back under developer options and turn off USB debugging. I also turn off the "allow install from unknown sources" option in the main Security menu.

And I am done.


Feedback? Questions? Drop me a line!

Atopo / tom@mmto.org