iSimulate
An Alternative for Casual Hobbyists
When porting a game of mine to the iPhone, I found I needed a device to test out multi-touch. I didn’t want to spend the $99 a year for the developer program, and I wasn’t willing to jailbreak my brand-new iPod. When I discovered iSimulate, it looked like there was finally an alternative for us casual hobbyists.
For those who do have access to the developer program, iSimulate lets you spend more time in the simulator before deploying, letting you use XCode’s debugging features without hassle. The displays of device input give you an extra level of debugging data that just isn’t available otherwise.
iSimulate gives you the ability to run your application inside of Apple’s iPhone simulator while using your iPhone or iPod Touch to interact with it. Multi-touch support lets you try those great features you’re planning before deploying to device. There’s also support for the accelerometer and CoreLocation, the GPS functionality that Apple has built into their handheld products.
Setting Up and Using iSimulate
Vimov’s site gives a quick primer on how to set up an iPhone project to use iSimulate. It’s as easy as they say it is; pop their library into your project, add the CoreLocation framework to your project, and add a linker flag. I don’t know exactly how they do it, but after that it works automagically. You’ll then have to buy the iSimulate app in the Apple AppStore, so that your iPhone can connect to your host computer. There’s no extra setup involved on the iPhone end.
When you want to use iSimulate, connect your iPhone to your host computer’s wifi network. It can be a base-station network or even an ad-hoc network directly with the host computer. If your iSimulate-enabled application is running in the simulator, it’ll appear in the iSimulate client on your iPhone. It’s just a matter of connecting and then you’re ready to send input to the simulated application. Network issues can cause a bit of trouble here. Make sure your network is functioning properly, or in case of doubt use an ad-hoc network. I ran into some trouble due to issues with my router, and they cleared up when I connected the iPhone to the ad-hoc network created by my host computer.
As you touch the iPhone’s screen, indicator graphics in the simulator show where the simulator sees your fingers. It’s a great help in debugging, since you can tell if your touches aren’t registering in the device or if it’s really a bug you’ve got to fix.
The iPhone-hosted end of iSimulate will show accelerometer data as graphs of the x, y and z components, along with the exact numbers. As you change the iPhone’s orientation, you can see the graphs react to your movements. A shake gesture shows up as a rapid up-and-down movement in the primary axis of the shake. I wasn’t able to test the location features of iSimulate, as my iPod Touch only has geolocation based on public wifi hotspots. I’m not near any such hotspots, so I was out of luck. If the other parts of iSimulate are any indication, however, I imagine it “just works.”
Wrapping up
I find iSimulate great value for what it is: a fantastic developer tool. It works as a less expensive alternative to Apple’s developer program for hobbyists, or a well-priced addition to what Apple offers. It works as advertised, is incredibly easy to set up and gives you helpful information about the input the device is getting. I’d recommend iSimulate to any iPhone developer, whether hobbyist or professional. It’s a great tool that would be a good buy even at a higher price. Let’s just hope Vimov maintains the great deal it’s got going!
Details
- Company: vimov, LLC
- URL: http://www.vimov.com
- Version:1.1
- Category: iPhone Simulator
- MRSP: $15.99
Further Resources
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