HOWTO: Run Cozmo app on Intex Aqua Fish
asked 2017-03-15 17:28:16 +0200
Cozmo is a little adorable robot that requires an Android / iOS app to interact. After seeing a video of this thing in action my wife and I instantly bought one. This works perfectly fine on the Aqua Fish (including all functions as of v1.2 of the app, even explorer mode), but I had a little difficulty installing it because the Google play store reports "This app is incompatible with your device" and refuses to allow it to be installed, the Amazon app store does something similar and the app is not available in the Android store that ships with the Aqua Fish.
Normally one might try one of the various third party apk downloader websites in this situation, however the apks from all of these were corrupt, being under 30MB and attempting to use them will result in a missing files error on launch, while the actual apk should be 227MB for v1.2.
To download the real apk file from the Amazon app store, I used the "appstore APK Downloader" extension for the Chrome web browser, available from here (there is a similar extension for Google Play that works with Firefox and Chrome, but the documentation suggested that it might need an already supported Android device to work, which is not the case for this one):
http://appstore-apk-downloader.com/
Follow the instructions on that page to install that extension in Chrome, then go here:
https://www.amazon.com/Anki-Inc-Cozmo-%C2%AE/dp/B01MA2WU55
Get the app, confirming the "purchase" (it's free) despite not having any supported devices, then use the new "Download APK" button added by the above extension to download the APK, signing in with your Amazon credentials so the extension can register a fake device with Amazon so that it thinks you have a supported device.
Copy the APK file to the Aqua Fish using whatever method you prefer (e.g. rsync), then use file manager (storage -> user data -> pully menu -> file manager) to open the apk file and install it (you may need to enable untrusted software in settings first).
Launch the app and it will guide you through setting up Cozmo. You will need to swipe out and manually connect to the WiFi network that Cozmo creates - one gotcha here that took me several attempts to figure out is that the password does NOT contain any spaces, even though it looks like it does on Cozmo's face (and on a side note, props to the developer for actually thinking about security and privacy with this device), but once connected go back to the app and it will update Cozmo's firmware (and then you will need to reconnect to Cozmo's WiFi), activate the cubes that came with the robot, etc. then bring Cozmo to life.
I have noticed that whenever I launch the app it can take two attempts for it to find Cozmo (even after confirming that Cozmo is on and connecting to Cozmo's WiFi network ahead of time) - simply pressing 'More Info', then closing that info and trying again works 100% of the time.
I can also confirm that Cozmo is quite happy to allow multiple phones to connect to it (just not at the same time) - I did the initial setup on my Aqua Fish, but later also connected my wife's iPhone to it, and unlocked activities and tricks are shared between them.
Please note that I cannot confirm if this would work with Alien Dalvik on the original Jolla phone - from what I gather the Aqua Fish has a more recent version of Alien Dalvik which supports Android 4.4 (listed as the minimum requirement on the Cozmo website), while Alien Dalvik on the original Jolla only supported Android 4.1, which is below the minimum requirements (but please correct me if this is wrong or based on outdated information, or if it works anyway).