Problems in Android Studio & Pepper SDK

Question

I'm having a little trouble getting the Pepper SDK to work in Android Studio. I have followed the installations steps in this webpage:

https://android.aldebaran.com/sdk/doc/pepper-sdk/installation.html

I have reached the 'Get Pepper SDK Plugin' section where the SDK is installed, and this SDK has been installed as can be seen in Figure 1, in the picture attached via the link at the bottom.

When the SDK is installed, the instructions say that a 'Robot SDK manager' button should appear in the taskbar, but no such button appears. However, the instructions also say that new menu items should appear, and these do appear as can be seen in figures 2.1 and 2.2. However, due to the lack of the 'Robot SDK Manager' I cannot complete the next step which is to 'Get Robot SDK and tools'. This is Problem 1.

Now I move on to creating an application by following the steps on this webpage:

https://android.aldebaran.com/sdk/doc/pepper-sdk/getting_started/starting_project.html

However, in Part 2, step 2, where it asks to 'Select the minimum Robot SDK version and the module to robotify', I get the error boxes as seen in Figures 3.1 and 3.2. After this, the options in the diologe box to select the APK version are empty, as seen in Figure 4. I am also getting an error message at the bottom of my screen as in Figure 5.

This means I cannot progress with creating a project for Pepper. This is Problem 2.

Could I possibly have some help with these problems and error messages, with suggested courses of action? Am I doing anything wrong. I am new to this.

Thank you very much.

Bradley.

Picture of Figures

Answer 1

Based on my personal experience, I followed the instruction available here and everything goes well. Download Android SDK API 23, Marshmallow, as well as Android SDK Build-tools API 23 in addition to "From Android Studio, choose File > Settings > Select Plugins sub-menu > install Pepper SDK" should work. Afterward, you can access to the Pepper SDK menu from Tools menu. However, there are upcoming problems you may encounter after these steps. Although I have done installation and test "Hello world" on the Pepper emulator successfully, I couldn't connect to the real robot.

First, a real robot sometimes disconnects from the access point. Second, after connecting to the robot from Android Studio, the connection will be lost immediately. Indeed, the connection between android studio and robot is not robust and In the Connect list, it appears and disappears frequently. Also, I tried to access the Pepper android tablet settings menu in order to enable the Developer option using the following command in Putty which connected to the robot shell. Unfortunately, the connection problem not solved although I enabled the Developer option. Next, the other problem with the Android Studio and pepper is that the Pepper android tablet starts up with a specific application contains three options "Tourism, Retail, and Hotel" plus setting ... option. Moreover, the "Return" and "Home" button behind the tablet doesn't work. Furthermore, it hasn't any USB cable port to connect to the ADB as well. Consequently, we couldn't work with the android tablet as a regular android device. Ultimately, the documents seem a little old and the community is extremely small in this topic.

Access to the Pepper Android tablet Settings:

qicli call ALTabletService._openSettings

Answer 2

Click View > Toolbar in Android Studio's menu bar to display the missing Pepper SDK buttons.