Running second android emulator with eclipse

Question

I'm trying to start two emulators simultaneously, for simulating messages between the 5554 and 5556 port. The first emulator runs fine, loads up within a couple minutes. Second one opens, but sticks at the reflecting "a n d r o i d" screen without end. Any ideas on why or how to fix it? I know I've had two emulators running on this computer before, from summer 2012 to early 2013, but because I didn't need to use two anymore, I haven't tried again until now.

I'm on windows, using eclipse to start the emulators. All help appreciated.

Answer 1

In case you need to send sms to the emulator you can use the following:

• get on emulator up and running.
• Open DDMS perspective
• Click Window menu in the Menubar of Eclipse.
• select Open Persperctive > DDMS

• open tab Emulator Control
• Under the Telephony Actions select SMS Now you can insert a number and send SMS to the Emulator.

NOTE: You must insert a number before performing any Call/SMS otherwise the controlls will be disabled.

Answer 2

There may be many reasons behind the slow loading of the emulator:

• Slow or old Laptop/Computer.
• Using latest android ROM images
• Incorrect settings

you can check this post slow emulator problems.

I recommend the following:

1. Use intel based android images with HAXM.
2. Run emulators without boot animation using command line parameters. To do this take the following steps:
   • first add android-sdk-path/tools and android-sdk-path/platform-tools to your PATH environment variables. (This is not required but can be very handy in future)
   • open command prompt.
   • type command emulator @your-avd-name -no-boot-anim -cpu-delay 0
3. set emulator affinity to maximum:
   • open Task manager when emulator(s) is running.
   • Goto Processes tab.
   • Right-click on emulator-arm.exe > Set Affinity... > select all processors

Hope it helps

Answer 3

You can change android project run configuration, target as manual selection instead of auto and to to that you have to go to the android project, right click> run as> run configuration and on run configuration window select the project under Android application (right panel) Then select Target tab at left panel, and select manual option. Now whenever you run a project a list with running emulators will apear and if you want to run more than one emulator> open AVD manager > select emulator > click on start > launch

Answer 4

Thanks for all the help, and the answer I selected most closely answers the problem of 2 emulators running slowly.

What it turned out to be was that I was using 767MB on an Intel HAXM emulator, and creating 2 of those went over the allocated amount for HAXM. After running 1 Intel and 1 ARM emulator, it worked. The error message was somewhat inconspicuous so I didn't notice it at first.