Android Debug Bridge

Android Debug Bridge (ADB)

With the Android Debug Bridge (ADB) you can connect your Smartphone to your computer via USB (or WLAN) and send commands from the computer to the Smartphone. My plan is to use the Smartphone as a display for my Raspberry Pi.

Shutdown

adb shell “reboot -p”

Power Up

Adb is not working when the phone is power off. One method to bootup the phone is to make a switch for the USB cable power. Another hack could be to disassemble the phone and attach a switch to the power button which can be controlled by the RasPi.

Toggle Screen on/off

adb shell input keyevent 26

Simulate Swipe

To unlock you can simulate a swipe event (find your screen coordinates via the developer options):

adb shell input swipe 240 610 400 610

Because the swipe is done in a very short time it can actually happen that the device doesn’t get unlocked. Try:

adb shell input swipe 240 610 400 610 | adb shell input tap 400 610

The command follows the pattern:

adb shell input [touchscreen|touchpad] swipe <x1> <y1> <x2> <y2>

Open Browser with a specified URL

adb shell am start -a android.intent.action.VIEW -d http://www.google.de

Advanced Scripts

The following bash script accepts parameters: * -app (this sends a broadcast to an WebView app which opens the passed in url) -

#!/bin/sh

ip=$(ifconfig en0 | grep inet | cut -d: -f2 | cut -d' ' -f2 | tr -d '\n'):8081
if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
  echo "nothing provided, open browser with standard ip"
  adb shell am start -a android.intent.action.VIEW -d "http://$ip/qr"
else
  echo "parameters provided..."
  if [ $1 = "-app" ] ;  then
    echo "open with app"
    if [ -z "$2" ] ; then
        echo "no address specified, open ip $ip"
        adb shell am broadcast -a com.example.Broadcast -e url "$ip/qr"
      else
        adb shell am broadcast -a com.example.Broadcast -e url $2
        echo "address speicified, open app with this address"
      fi
  else
    echo "open with browser specified address"
    if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
      ip = $1
    fi
    adb shell am start -a android.intent.action.VIEW -d "http://$1"
  fi
fi

Monkeyrunner

send 100 random movements:

adb shell monkey --pct-motion 100 100

Start App

Check if an app is started:

adb shell pgrep com.webview

If not, start the app:

adb shell am start -n com.webview/com.package.name.ActivityName

Android Debug Bridge a post to the main page