Device connection issues

In some cases, Arm Mobile Studio tools can not find the connected Android device. Here are some common reasons why this happens, and how to resolve them.

Condition

Affected releases: All.

Check your device is set up correctly

  1. Update the firmware on your device to the latest version.
  2. Check that the device is switched on, connected to your host machine through USB, and is running Android 8 or later.
  3. Ensure Developer Mode is enabled on the device, and enable USB Debugging using Settings > Developer options.
  4. Type adb devices into a terminal on your host machine, to return the ID of any connected devices.

Check that ADB is installed

Check that you have Android Debug Bridge (ADB) installed and working correctly:

  1. In a command terminal, type adb --help to check that ADB is installed - this should return the list of options for the adb command.

    If you can not run the adb command successfully, it may not be installed, or you may not be able to run it from your current location.
  2. Install Android Debug Bridge (ADB). ADB is available with the Android SDK platform tools, which are installed as part of Android Studio, or you can download them separately here.
  3. Edit your PATH environment variable to add the path to the ADB executable, so that you can run the adb command from any directory.

Errors running the connection script 

Streamline and Performance Advisor use a connection script to set up the device ready for capture. Use either the gator_me.py script, or the lwi_me.py script as described in the Get started guides to do this. If the script fails, check the following:

  1. Ensure that Python 3.5 or later is installed, and the path to the Python executable is added to your PATH environment variable, so that you can run Python commands from any directory. To test Python, in a terminal, type python --help which returns the list of available command options.
  2. When running the script, ensure that either:
    1. You have used the --daemon option to specify the path to the daemon application gatord, that will be used to collect data from your device. 
      python3 {gator_me.py|lwi_me.py} --daemon <path_to_gatord>
    2. You have copied the required gatord file into the current directory.

    This file is provided in your Arm Mobile Studio installation directory: <install_directory>/streamline/bin/{arm|arm64}/gatord. Different files are supplied for 32-bit (arm) or 64-bit (arm64) applications.
  3. When running Performance Advisor's lwi_me.py script, you need to specify the --lwi-out-dir option to provide the path to an empty directory where Performance Advisor will store the frame images it captures.
    python3 lwi_me.py --daemon <path_to_gatord> --lwi-out-dir <path_to_empty_directory>
  4. To use Performance Advisor's lwi_me.py script to connect to Android 10 devices, you need to specify the -lwi-gles-layer-lib-path or --lwi-vk-layer-lib-path option, to provide the path to the OpenGL ES or Vulkan layer library file.
    python3 lwi_me.py --daemon <path_to_gatord> --lwi-out-dir <path_to_empty_directory> [--lwi-gles-layer-lib-path | --lwi-vk-layer-lib-path <path_to_Android10_layer_lib>]
    This file is provided in your Arm Mobile Studio installation directory: <install_directory>/performance_advisor/lwi/target/android/arm/{rooted|unrooted}/{arm64-v8a|armeabi-v7a}/. Different files are supplied for rooted or unrooted devices, and for 32-bit (armeabi-v7a) or 64-bit (arm64-v8a) applications.
  5. Ensure you are using the latest version of Mobile Studio.

Device support

As Arm-based processors are very widespread in the smartphone industry it is impossible for us to test our tools on all devices available for sale to the public. Check our supported devices page for a list of devices we have tested and confirm will work with Arm Mobile Studio.

Get help

If you're still experiencing connection issues, ask for help on the Arm Community graphics forum.

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