
Ask HN: Any way to test Google ARCore without a supported device? - nkkollaw
I&#x27;m wondering if there&#x27;s any way to test Google ARCore without a supported device (Pixel or Galaxy S8).<p>I have a Moto G5 Plus, perhaps there&#x27;s some simulator that can pretend it&#x27;s another phone..?
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ditn
Yes, someone has stripped the device check and ported it to unsupported
devices [https://github.com/tomthecarrot/arcore-for-
all](https://github.com/tomthecarrot/arcore-for-all)

~~~
chris2112
I have a G5 Plus as well and unfortunately the Tango Core service crashes when
the app opens.

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nkkollaw
...what are the steps you followed to even try running it?

I was able to install the modified ARCore APK, but I wasn't able to install
the browser.

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mlevental
in that same repo is the helloar apk

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JulesRosser
Emulated devices won't work I'm afraid. I've just checked, and the SDK checks
against a list of device fingerprints: i.e. return
Build.fingerprint.contains(sailfish || marlin || walleye...)

However, this check is made from the HelloArActivity and could be bypassed. It
may still fail, but I'd be happy to build an APK with the supported devices
check commented out if you'd like.

As a side note, I've been playing with the sample SDK, but it's a slow process
due to the lack of documentation. Does anyone know of any communities for
sharing info on ArCore?

Thanks in advance

~~~
nkkollaw
> the SDK checks against a list of device fingerprints: i.e. return
> Build.fingerprint.contains(sailfish || marlin || walleye...)

Yes, that's what I thought, I guess they just do it to ease debugging since my
phone is just or almost as capable as the Galaxy S8. So, `HelloArActivity`
could be patched so that everything worked on other devices?

> It may still fail, but I'd be happy to build an APK with the supported
> devices check commented out if you'd like.

Is that the only file? So one can just download the SDK and comment that out?

> As a side note, I've been playing with the sample SDK, but it's a slow
> process due to the lack of documentation. Does anyone know of any
> communities for sharing info on ArCore?

Well, there's this:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Arcore/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Arcore/), but it's
new and I doubt is that active. Perhaps you could fork Google's project on
GitHub and edit the—almost non-existing—instructions in the README?

~~~
JulesRosser
I'm afraid that it's a bit more complex than I first thought. Someone else has
already done this though, take a look:
[https://github.com/tomthecarrot/arcore-for-
all](https://github.com/tomthecarrot/arcore-for-all)

~~~
nkkollaw
Very nice.

I'll give this a try.

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kakali
This likely won't work too well because the Pixel and S8 are the only ones
they have camera and imu calibration for. If you do hack it to get it working,
you should at expect degraded performance or complete failure.

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nkkollaw
But Google is saying that it's optimized for a wide variety of devices...

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kakali
Yeah, but not in the first release.

