This paper introduces Pervaho, a platform for developing and testing mobile ad hoc applications. The Pervaho platform is founded on a location-based publish/-subscribe service, which allows mobile peers to interact in a flexible and anonymous manner, based on their collocation at the time of the interaction. To validate the semantics of location-based criteria - a general issue in mobile ad hoc applications - we also propose a phone motion simulator as second cornerstone of our platform. Finally, we evaluate the usability of Pervaho by developing a concrete application with and without Pervaho.