Installing an OPA Hub Self Study Platform - Going Mobile

Posted on March 29, 2016August 28, 2020 by Richard Napier

Installing an OPA Hub Self Study Platform – Going Mobile

I’m often being asked these days about easy ways to use the OPA Mobile App for testing and self-study purposes with their OPA Hub without having to spend money (for example buying a new Android or iOS device would solve the problem) or time (the Google Android Developer Kit is large and cumbersome to download and configure, and you may want to have many different device emulations). With iOS is it pretty much a dead-end unless you own an Apple computer or want to spend ages building a “Mac-alike” virtual machine running under Virtual Box. So the easy way is to use Google and Android. As stated above the default emulator and other Google SDK software is both large and cumbersome. So what is the other solution. This

Genymotion – the best and fastest emulator for Android, that uses Virtual Box as the back end (so you probably don’t need to install much except the tools and the device emulations). As they have a personal account feature that is free (perfect for self-study) and professional accounts with more features (perfect for the project team) , you can use it in a variety of situations, whichever applies to you.

So assuming you have gotten your OPA Self-Study Environment up and running (see the previous Post Series) then how do you “Go Mobile”? Follow these steps below and you will be ready in no time.

Choose whichever plan is right for you on the Genymotion website from the above link, and download the software.

Then create a new virtual machine, choosing whichever flavour of Android you are interested in for testing.

The setting up of the emulation will take a few minutes.

Then play with the settings until you are happy. You can also access the complete settings from your Genymotion window by clicking the Spanner button. You probably will want to select processor, memory and so on and fine-tune it all.

Now you can start your mobile device.

Once the device is up and running, you need to install two items before you can go any further. You will need to go to https://gist.github.com/wbroek/9321145 and download the following :

ARM Translation Installer v1.1
Google Apps for Android X.X (choose the version of Android that you decided to run your mobile emulation with).

When you have downloaded both of the ZIP files, drag and drop the first one onto your emulator. You will see a warning message like the one below, accept and let the ZIP file get imported.

At the end of the import you will see this. Using either the Android emulator buttons or by clicking the Close Window button, stop and restart the Android device.

Repeat for the second ZIP file. It will take longer to import and restart. At the second restart you will see something like this during a certain period of time:

After the restart, find the Google Play Store app and login with your Google Account. Depending on the version of Android you chose and the ZIP file you imported, you may be faced with a couple of issues:

You may have to update your Google Play and other apps before continuing. You should do so.
You may receive “Oops, Google Play Store has stopped” multiple times. Persevere and the updates will happen.

Now you can browse the App Store and find the App you want to install. Accept whatever permissions are needed.

After installing, switch the device to landscape rotation (there is an icon in the Genymotion toolbar) and run the App. If you cannot find it, scroll through the pages of your Android desktop.

You will notice two things – this can run alongside your Virtual Machine with the OPA Hub, and the IP address is printed at the top of the window, which makes it easier to test network connectivity between your two virtual machines.