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ADB

ADB or Android Debug Bridge is one of the key utilities used by Android developers and power users to control Android to its core without rooting. It’s a key tool to use LOVR effectively on your Android HMD, making it much faster to debug, install, update and much more.

To use it, you need three steps first:

  1. activate ADB on the HMD
  2. install ADB on your PC
  3. connect the devices

ADB on the HMD

ADB is usually hidden in the Developer Settings of the device, but it’s not a standard process to activate it.

Oculus

This process is a bit involved, as Meta requires users to register as developers. It’s not hard, just tedious.

  1. Create an organization on Meta’s page with a valid Meta account, which you can create unlinked from any Facebook profiles
  2. Install the Oculus App on your phone
  3. Link the app to the HMD and your account, linked to the organization
  4. Activate developer Mode setting in the Headset Settings in the app
  5. In your HMD, in Settings, find Developer and activate USB Connection Dialogue

Now your headset can use ADB! This process can also be done without a phone using the Oculus Developer Hub program

For a more step-by-step guide, you can read here

Pico 4

You can activate them directly, with no middleman:

  1. Start your device
  2. open settings and got to Settings>General>About
  3. Click 7 times on the Software Version Number until you unlock the Developer settings
  4. GO to Developer Settings, activate ADB there

ADB on PC

ADB might already be installed if you developed Android apps, if you played around with custom ROMs or debloating Android devices. Check your command line for a adb command.

Otherwise, this process depends on your OS of choice

Windows

  1. Go to the Official ADB Page and download the SDK Platform. You can also use Android Studio, but for this it’s overkill
  2. Unpack the folder somewhere safe and without weird permission rules, C:/ADB/ is a classic
  3. Add the folder to window’s PATH variable, so you can just call adb via command line

Linux

  1. Some distros carry adb in their repo, check those to have the best experience
  2. otherwise, you can go to the Official ADB Page and download the SDK Platform.
  3. Unpack the folder somewhere safe and without weird permission rules, HOME/ADB/ is probably fine
  4. Add the folder to your home’s $PATH variable or equivalent, so you can just call adb via command line

macOS

We don’t have any experience with macOS, so we can only point to what looks like an exhaustive answer

Connecting ADB

Now that everything is set up, we can finally connect the devices:

  1. boot both HMD and laptop up
  2. connect via a USB cable
  3. run adb on your laptop
  4. check the HMD. A dialogue to enable USB debugging should appear. Allow it and set it to not ask again
  5. check by calling adb devices -l on your PC, you should see a list of devices, including at least one

You’re now connected! This connection via cable is not comfortable, we can switch to Wi-Fi by calling

adb tcpip 5555
adb connect <HMD_IP>:5555

and disconnecting the USB cable upon success

This obviously requires your device to be on the same network as your PC

ADB Commands

The basics use is installing LOVR and LODR, by calling

adb install lovr.apk

and also updating your project by calling

adb push --sync /path/to/project/. /sdcard/Android/data/org.lovr.app/files

Keep in mind if you’re using LOVR or LODR, as they have different package names and therefore different folders:

  • LOVR: org.lovr.app
  • LODR: org.lovr.hotswap

Keep also in mind that remote files are not removed when removed locally, so you might have to clean up manually using ls and rm

ADB can do a lot, some useful resources are:

I advise you to learn how to use the tasks functions or other similar methods of your IDE to make your workflow much smoother.

Some very useful commands include:

Capturing a screenshot and saving it on your PC to a folder with date and time in the name

adb exec-out screencap -p > Screens/screen_$(date +'%Y-%m-%d-%X').png

Accessing remote print statements:

adb logcat -s LOVR

Getting a slightly delayed HD screen stream

adb exec-out screenrecord --bit-rate=6m --output-format=h264 --size 1280x720 - | ffplay -framerate 24 -probesize 32 -sync video  -

Rebooting LOVR

adb shell am force-stop org.lovr.app
adb shell am start org.lovr.app/org.lovr.app.Activity

Accessing the remote shell of the HMD

adb shell

Doing it all at once

adb push --sync ${workspaceFolder}/Project/. /sdcard/Android/data/org.lovr.app/files
adb shell am force-stop org.lovr.app
adb shell am start org.lovr.app/org.lovr.app.Activity 
adb logcat -s LOVR