Here's how to enable use of Android Debug Bridge on Ubuntu (Linux) with this Archos product once you have the 1.1.01 firmware installed:
Set the tablet USB connection in ADB mode (Device storage & USB connection->USB connection mode->Debug bridge (ADB)) and connect its USB cable to your
Ubuntu machine.
Do:
lsusb
This will list USB devices connected to your machine.
A list of USB devices will be shown. For example:
Bus 001 Device 016: ID 18d1:0002
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 004 Device 012: ID 049f:0086 Compaq Computer Corp. Bluetooth Device
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
In this case our new friend; the Archos 5 Internet Tablet is the first line shown above. Pay attention to the first ID hex code part "18d1".
(Archos forgot to add descriptive text so that part is blank).
That id is used in the following steps to identify this unit.
Create a new file (as root)
sudo gedit /etc/udev/rules.d/51-android.rules
with the following content
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", SYSFS{idVendor}=="18d1", MODE="0666"
Make sure that the text after {idVendor} is the same as the device id found when using the lsusb command. Save and exit the editor
To make execution of the rule possible, perform a chmod
sudo chmod a+rx /etc/udev/rules.d/51-android.rules
To make the rule active, restart udev
sudo /etc/init.d/udev restart
Final check
To check if the device is available use the adb tool (which is part of the Android SDK. Download and installation instructions at http://code.google.com/android)
adb devices
This will return a list of attached devices.
List of devices attached
0123456789ABCDEF device
Yipeee! Who cares they forgot to change that default string; your Archos 5 Internet Tablet is now ready to be used in application development!
You can run the set of adb commands towards it and run on-device debugging (ODD).
I tested some ODD briefly with Eclipse and the 1.5 Android SDK and it works.
Regarding that "51-android.rules" file; in case you work with several other Android devices as well in development you can list these are further entries in the same rules file. Here's an example where I attached three different devices,
the Archos, a HTC Hero, and a Google ADP1 (HTC Dream).
Both the HTC devices share the same vendor id so they can share the same rules entry. This shows two entries in the rules file that cater for the three devices mentioned:
# Archos 5 Internet Media Tablet
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", SYSFS{idVendor}=="18d1", MODE="0666"
# HTC device (ADP1,Hero)
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", SYSFS{idVendor}=="0bb4", MODE="0666"
adb lists the three devices:
adb devices
List of devices attached
HT97KL900624 device
0123456789ABCDEF device
HT94LLZ00229 device
In this example when launching a debug session in Eclipse the following panel pops up asking
for which device to debug on:
so, this makes this pretty much plug and play.
Some trivia: It seems Archos have not yet configured ADB the way they should (as seen by the unchanged default strings above). The 18d1 value is identical to an ID that shows up in the HTC EXCA300 ("Google Sooner") device, an Android prototype unit provided for universities and companies, see for example this Stanford University page: http://android.stanford.edu/index.php/Main_Page
I think HTC should have launched these commercially. They look cool !
(Credits: Modeled loosely after this blog post by Johan de Koning February 2009)
/gunnar MEDIAL Maskin & Data, Sweden http://medial.com
