Appinventor woes (again!)

[jaf]

I can't get this blasted program (Appinventor) to run reliably anymore. It used to work fine with only the occasional glitch but now we are lucky if we can get 2 students on it at a time. We originally had Appinventor 1 which was upgraded to Appinventor 2.2 and this worked fine for a few weeks. I have deployed the setup file to PCs and created a package which changes the run-emulator.bat to point to %HOMESHARE% (which is the user's N: drive - CC4). I have also copied the appinventor-emulator-data from my admin account with the newest version to the user's .appinventor folder in their N: drive, and also to the extras folder in C:\program files\appinventor\commands-for-appinventor.

 

It seems to work on a couple of computers at a time but won't reliably work on all of the class. I have tried profile resets, re-copying the appinventor-emulator-data to the user's N: drive and have just rebuilt all of the computers in the room they are trying to use it. I am out of ideas because it used to work fine but has given up - and it doesn't seem to be a particular user or computer - it works on any computer or user - just not everyone's at once! The only change we have made is a new bloxx webfilter being installed. But this has the same configuration as the old one and unauthenticated access to the appinventor site.

 

Can anyone point me in the direction of where I can go with this - or any logs I can look at? We get a variety of error messages - sometimes it doesn't think aistarter has started (even though it has), sometimes the emulator just hangs on the android screen and doesn't go any further, images don't always load, and sometimes it just hangs with connecting to emulator and doesn't connect at all to the dos prompt in the aistarter.

 

If anyone has any ideas I would be very grateful!

 

Many thanks

[Tallwood_6]

RM are selling an install pack for MIT app inventor 2 which might save some headaches, I bit the bullet and placed an order last week as I'd rather have something I know will work 100% if it's going get be widespread use.

[the_wuigi]

You tried this from Jon on the RM Forums?

 

Ok this is how I done it...using RM App Wiz / WinInstall LE: 1. Run first scan as usual. 2. Install AppInventor. 3. Edit in notepad run-emulator.bat from: C:\Program Files\AppInventor\commands-for-Appinventor Lines 9 and 43 contain %HOMEPATH% Change this to %LOCALAPPDATA% 4. Save and close 5. Go to C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup (the ALLUSERSPROFILE windows variable) 6. In the above folder, delete the shortcut to aistarter (otherwise when you deploy the software, the aistarter cmd box will always load up for any user which is annoying) 7. Close all windows and run 2nd scan. 8. Manually add shortcut of AiStarter to your Program Sets and instruct kids to launch this before trying to run the emulator. 9. Students must have the 'batch processing' (I think it's called that) option in the RMMC. 10. Bob is your uncle.

 

I didn't mess around with localhost or 127.0.0.1 exceptions or .appinventor folders...basically used AppInventor V1 experience with this.

 

Jon

[Tallwood_6]

App wizard can produce some pretty untidy msi packages. I am hoping that RM may have completely repackaged it and turned all the bat files into executables so the batch processing doesn't need to be turned on.

[grant_girdwood]

I can't get this blasted program (Appinventor) to run reliably anymore. It used to work fine with only the occasional glitch but now we are lucky if we can get 2 students on it at a time. We originally had Appinventor 1 which was upgraded to Appinventor 2.2 and this worked fine for a few weeks. I have deployed the setup file to PCs and created a package which changes the run-emulator.bat to point to %HOMESHARE% (which is the user's N: drive - CC4). I have also copied the appinventor-emulator-data from my admin account with the newest version to the user's .appinventor folder in their N: drive, and also to the extras folder in C:\program files\appinventor\commands-for-appinventor.

 

It seems to work on a couple of computers at a time but won't reliably work on all of the class. I have tried profile resets, re-copying the appinventor-emulator-data to the user's N: drive and have just rebuilt all of the computers in the room they are trying to use it. I am out of ideas because it used to work fine but has given up - and it doesn't seem to be a particular user or computer - it works on any computer or user - just not everyone's at once! The only change we have made is a new bloxx webfilter being installed. But this has the same configuration as the old one and unauthenticated access to the appinventor site.

 

Can anyone point me in the direction of where I can go with this - or any logs I can look at? We get a variety of error messages - sometimes it doesn't think aistarter has started (even though it has), sometimes the emulator just hangs on the android screen and doesn't go any further, images don't always load, and sometimes it just hangs with connecting to emulator and doesn't connect at all to the dos prompt in the aistarter.

 

If anyone has any ideas I would be very grateful!

 

Many thanks

 

Hey Jaf,

 

The new Bloxx appliance shouldn't introduce any issues with this software, if you'd like our support team to double check to rule us out just give us a call/email.

 

Thanks,

Grant