concept emulator in category python
This is an excerpt from Manning's book Hello App Inventor!: Android programming for kids and the rest of us.
The emulator is a program that runs on your PC, Mac, or Linux machine and that acts like your phone. But some smartphone-specific features don’t work on the emulator. These include the following:
It’s incredibly easy to make a mistake when you’re programming—you can grab the wrong block, forget a step, or even miss plugging blocks together by a few millimeters. So it’s important to test the app yourself before you hand it over to users. You can test the app using a smartphone or the onscreen Android emulator. App Inventor will translate your Designer components and program blocks into a bunch of binary code that the emulator or phone can understand. You’ll test the app by using a direct connection between the Blocks Editor and your phone or emulator. This is the way you’ll test most of your apps while you build them—later we’ll look at how you can package an app so that it works even if the phone isn’t plugged in to your computer.
You connect a smartphone or run the emulator from the Connect menu at the top of your screen.
If you have a phone, you can connect wirelessly (Wi-Fi), which is the easiest option. Alternatively, you can plug it in via a USB cable (you probably got this when you bought the phone). If you don’t have a phone, then use the emulator. Do one of the following: