How to set up ADB for remote machine development and local device deployment

42
votes

My scenario is this: I telework from home and log into my work machine via Windows Remote Desktop. I use Eclipse as my development environment for Android apps on my work computer.

Using ADB, I would like to be able to deploy apps from my work computer to a device on my home network, for scenarios where the emulator doesn't do the app justice.

I found this post, which discuss a very similar scenario, with the exception of deploying to an emulator running on a local PC, instead of deploying to a local device:

http://www.41post.com/5003/programming/android-adb-remote-emulator-access

I'm trying to take the same steps, but figure out how to target a local device on my home WiFi network & tethered to my local home PC, instead of the local emulator.

Right now, I have the remote PC set up to try and connect to my public router IP on port 5585 - but in my router, what IP/port do I forward this to to connect to the local device?

In the example using the emulator, they forward to the local PC address where the emulator is running and port 5555, and adb is not running on the local PC. I have configured my router to forward to my device IP, with the device on WiFi, as well as my local PC IP where the device is tethered.

However in both scenarios, when I try adb connect <routerIP>:5585 on my remote PC, it gives me an error unable to connect to <routerIP>:5585:5585. I get the same response when trying to forward to/listen to other ports. I'm not getting any security errors in the router log, so it appears the port forwarding is working.

Questions:

  • What local IP/port number should I forward to when configuring port forwarding on my local network to connect to the local device using the remote adb instance?
  • Should I be targeting the local PC IP that the device is tethered to, or the local device IP?
  • If I target the local device IP, what port number should I forward to?
  • Do I need adb running on my local PC?
6
androidadbremote-debugging
Any reason why you don't copy the apk to your local machine and just deploy it from there? – Abdullah Jibaly
FYI, it seems that adb connect is supposed to target the IP of the actual Android device based on what I see here: stackoverflow.com/questions/2604727/… – Abdullah Jibaly
@AbdullahJibaly Copying the APK locally is an option, but just not a very efficient one in the iterative development process. I'd prefer to use ADB directly, which cuts a lot of the steps in between compiling and the app appearing on the device. – Sean Barbeau
@AbdullahJibaly There isn't an approved answer on the post you list, so I'm not sure what to make of it. Also, these responses also seem to require root - I'd like to do this on a stock device. When I try 'adb tcpip 5555' to redirect, it just hangs at the 'redirecting' message and doesn't return to the prompt. – Sean Barbeau

6 Answers

50
votes

I had a similar situation. I work on a remote desktop for development but my android device is connected to my local laptop. I wanted to be able to use adb and the android plugin in eclipse on the remote desktop and connect to the device attached to my laptop. After searching on the internet and not finding anything that really helped, I decided to write a port forwarder that would do the trick. You can find it here. I hope it will be helpful to other people as well.

25
votes

Beginning Android 4.3 you can:

  1. Make adb server listen on all interfaces. You have two options:
    • Make gListen=1 and recompile adb (I have compiled it on Linux-x64 machine for you and put it here)
    • Start adb server with -a parameter: adb -a -P 5037 fork-server server&
  2. Use adb on your remote machine with extra parameter, e.g. adb -H <remote_host> shell
6
votes

Another setup for remote host + local device testing. This will be useful for lots of people working from home on a laptop, connected to their development host machine still in the office. Note that I assume both devhost/laptop are both running Unix, but other OSes will be able to run the commands on the command prompt/shell.

# Kill old adb server.
devhost$ adb kill-server 

# Activate adb server on client
laptop$ adb start-server

# Start ssh tunnel. Hide/minimize this window not to close it by accident
laptop$ ssh -XC -R 5037:localhost:5037 <your devhost machine>

# Should work by now with the local device connected to the laptop
devhost$ adb logcat
5
votes

You can solve the issue by port forwarding.

  • Download Secure Shell app from the Chrome app store
  • Connect to your machine (step-by-step setup)
  • In this connection, disable adb server: adb kill-server
  • Create a new port forwarding connection (same as a regular connection, but set the SSH Arguments field to: -N -R 5037:localhost:5037)
  • On your laptop, open up a terminal and enable adb server: adb start-server
2
votes

My situation required using a VM that is on a different network, but that I rmd into (an Azure VM). The VM and my local laptop are both running Windows 10. First, I had to install USB Redirector RDP Edition on my local machine (costs $80, but there might be free alternatives), then install the Google Android USB driver on the VM and the Universal Adb Driver on the VM. I'm now able to load an Android Studio App the project in Android Studio on the VM, connect an Android device on my laptop, and debug the app on the device.

0
votes

Probably there is a simpler solution, providing the device, the local and remote machine belong to the same network. Let's say your device has a certain IP over the network and let's say you decide to use your preferred PORT: well, you can do the following steps.

On the machine where the device is plugged please run:

adb devices

adb tcpip PORT

On the remote machine you need to deactivate 'Discover USB devices', 'Discover network targets' and 'Port forwarding' and then run:

adb connect IP:PORT

and you are ready to debug on remote machine.

Hope this will help someone ...

Regards