Hello,
First off, apologies if I have posted this in the incorrect forum.
The company I work for is looking to update one of it's product lines and has been toying with the idea of using Android as a development platform. Up until now the philosophy has always been to develop simple, bespoke embedded software that provides only the functionality that is needed at the time. The device itself will be a medical device, and as such will have no telephony requirements (and associated things like contacts, calander and the large majority of the pre-installed Android apps).
I have read, and understand it is possible to re-compile Android from source and remove all of these non-required functionality. My question is really if that is worth doing? i.e. stripping out all un-needed applications that get build into a stock ROM. Or would it be a more efficient to use some form of OTS embedded Linux platform?
Something in Android 4.0 that does seem to be useful is the support for Bluetooth HDP.
Kind Regards,
Simon
Well there are other devices that aren't phones that use Android. Take the motoactv for example. It's a fitness watch that runs a stripped version of Android, but it's still Android and applications can still be programmed and installed to it.
Hello World ! I have identified a need for a smaller tablet and have begun the process to request information about how to have the hardware designed and manufactured. But as we all know, hardware is only half of the equation - the other half is the software. So I have a question for you:
What would the ideal software configuration for an Android-based LTE-enabled TABLET (with SIM card), suitable for ROM developers ?
I have (a little) previous experience (as an end-user) with replacing the manufacturer/carrier ROM for my HTC Desire with the CyanogenMod ROM. That, coupled with my years of experience as a developer (pre-Internet) allow me to at least be aware that there are layers of software from bootup, to device drivers, to OS, etc.
I would like this community to help define (or point me at some documentation) what those specific layers are, which package(s) should be used at each level, up to the point of being able to get into the Google Play Store.
I am not interested in which apps should be discussed - that's the end-user's problem.
Thanks,
Steven.
Dream software config for Android Tablet ROM developers ?
Hey all, hoping to get some visibility & feedback here ...
Steven.
StevenCShearer said:
Hello World ! I have identified a need for a smaller tablet and have begun the process to request information about how to have the hardware designed and manufactured. But as we all know, hardware is only half of the equation - the other half is the software. So I have a question for you:
What would the ideal software configuration for an Android-based LTE-enabled TABLET (with SIM card), suitable for ROM developers ?
I have (a little) previous experience (as an end-user) with replacing the manufacturer/carrier ROM for my HTC Desire with the CyanogenMod ROM. That, coupled with my years of experience as a developer (pre-Internet) allow me to at least be aware that there are layers of software from bootup, to device drivers, to OS, etc.
I would like this community to help define (or point me at some documentation) what those specific layers are, which package(s) should be used at each level, up to the point of being able to get into the Google Play Store.
I am not interested in which apps should be discussed - that's the end-user's problem.
Thanks,
Steven.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I would like to create an IoT device by buying new, cheap android phones, strip them down and remove the screen, rebox into my own physical box, install a custom ROM without any bloatware (and that will boot without a screen!), and install my android app on the device to do stuff.
An example of a purpose for this could be a GPS tracker for a car. The box would be placed in the car, and record GPS and accelerometer readings, posting these readings back to a central server via the cellular network. (This is just a random example, so don't focus too much on the detail of this, but there are thousands of uses for a IoT board with the sensor, CPU, RAM, storage, and connectivity capabilities of a budget android smartphone)
The reason I want to use existing phones is that they are wonderful, mass produced, cheap devices with a variety of sensors I can use.
The reason I want to use Android is because it is because of the customization ability, and the mature development ecosystem.
To me, it seems an obvious thing to do, but I don't seem to be getting much joy trying to search for examples of this sort of thing (either here, or on the internet in general).
So some questions:
1. General thoughts? (Good idea? Am I missing some fundamental problem?)
2. What are the challenges of running Android without a screen connected?
3. Are there any custom ROMs you know of that specialize in this sort of thing?
(I've seen Google Brilo, but it still seems a bit early yet, and I really like the idea of just using the standard Android SDK to develop the app - and the abundance of help and information that comes with it)
Thanks!
First off, I wanted to say I posted a few threads about this thing here asking questions about stuff I needed to get it working in the way I'd like and I'd want to thank you because I have made a lot of progress in getting it to be what I'd like it to be. I also don't know if this is the best forum to post this report because it's neither a question nor necessarily a tutorial but rather a summary and description of work already done so far, and especially because this device, while it sure runs Android (very well!) does not fit into any of the categories on this site neatly.
The story so far
This post concerns my experience working with the ITX-3588J, a board released just a few months ago by the Chinese manufacturer Firefly (or T-Chip Intelligent Technology Co. Ltd, based in Zhongshan) that is in the coveted mini-ITX form factor which means it can actually fit into a small-size desktop computer case and indeed has enough compute power to theoretically - and perhaps not so theoretically! - function as an honest desktop system with an ARM processor: namely the - also very new - Rockchip RK3588 system-on-a-chip.
About two months ago, I was looking into acquiring a new kind of computer to replace my somewhat longer on the tooth x86 machine that would be compact, low-power, and easy to transport while also being a fully capable desktop. And I certainly didn't want Apple. I had seen some very small form x86 desktops before, but I also knew there were many boards - like Raspberry Pi - that featured the ARM processor. Not content with the Pi, which is still very weak for this application at least when compared against modern software, I wanted to see if there was something else by now in a similar vein, and when I saw this board I thought it was an amazing option, esp. given I have not yet found a peer. Many ARM single-board devices exist but this is the only one I've found so far that looks to be in a proper desktop form factor and sporting a processor powerful enough to work at that level.
So I got the board, a case, and - noting it had SATA ports - a cheap 250 GB SSD, and put it all together ... and fired it up! And to my surprise, it booted up Android! Which was a real shocker because I generally thought this'd be like another PC board, not having had much experience with this ecosystem beyond phones, so that it would just give the usual "OS not found" stuff. Nope - pre-loaded on the board. Very minimal, very bare-bones though, not even the Google Play and similar essentials required for a usable Android experience. Yet with the little bit I had, I couldn't help but notice it was extremely fluid, responsive, and snappy, moreso than my aging 2018 era x86 box. Moreover, it was very, very interesting (and exciting!) to see Android booted onto a full-size monitor screen like Linux or Microsoft Windows - and actually and surprisingly, to see that it didn't look and feel all that bad!
However, of course, I wanted more. First, I wanted a fully-featured installation of Android. Second, I wanted to run Linux on it - especially given that, a short while later, I found that the board manufacturers were offering a stock Ubuntu 20.04 to be installable to it. Although, in the early stages, I didn't know how to do this at all, and then soon after learned how to reflash the embedded MMC chip to change the OS. And I did so, trying the Ubuntu and finding it also very performant, but not liking either that it was not quite the newest version but also more that it was mutually exclusive with Android - so far.
And that would begin a long - and at many times frustrating, especially given how much information out there is not at all tuned to a device like this being pressed into this application - learning journey toward exploring topics as diverse as how ARM processors and SoCs work under the hood, U-Boot, kernel features, the Firefly-Rockchip developer kit - and having to essentially single-handedly discover many of that kit's ins and outs given there was pretty much no documentation - and more, ultimately leading to where I've got it to now.
What it can do at this point
And that is, right now, I have it sitting here, loaded up with the stock Android 12 and Ubuntu 20.04 - with the former on the eMMC and the latter on the SSD hard drive. On the Android side, Google Play is now loaded and functional, though Google Chrome is not (it crashes with a "Telephony is null" exception for some reason, which seems to suggest for some reason it's trying to act like it's on a phone but isn't). Zoom - an app that I really, really wanted to have (and why I wanted to keep Android around on it) - works and works smoother and cleaner than my 2018 x86 Linux clunker. On the Ubuntu side, though, things are not yet coming - mostly because of seeming inability to use U-Boot to boot from the SSD. I managed to install GRUB, and given that Firefly's generous board SDK provides the full U-Boot source code was able to recompile it with the necessary "bootefi" command enabled which is not present in stock, but nonetheless alas this U-Boot seems to have its SATA support bugged or incomplete, because it would crash immediately upon trying to initialize that subsystem.
Where I'd like to go with it
Obviously, full dual boot of Android and Ubuntu, so getting U-Boot to boot the GRUB resident on the hard drive, is the biggest issue so far, and that means investigating whatever is the problem (or not?) in its SATA subsystem. Getting Google Chrome working on Android is another important step. Moreover - though it would cost extra money that I do not have right now - there's the very interesting possibility, owing to the fact that it has a built in M.2 slot on the board, and alluded to in the title - that the device could be made to act as a cell phone. And finally, the possibility of upgrading to a newer version of Ubuntu (ideally 22.04) - however from what I know so far, it looks like this will have to wait because the stock Linux kernels do not currently support the RK3588 fully - though I'd suggest the Linux kernel developers really should take a look at the SDK that came with this thing because it has lots of code in it including for the kernel, all under GPL.
Final note
One of the most interesting things I've learned from this project, and mentioned earlier, is just how well Android seems to work as a desktop OS. While there have apparently been some attempts to port it to x86, this is perhaps one of the first devices that is desktop-workable and which runs it natively. And one of the things I find that's nice about it is that ironically, because all the apps are designed for small screens, when they are run on a very big screen (and this monitor is not "very big" even by today's monitor standards, being a used and earlier LCD type), they are extremely easy on the eyes and have minimal UI clutter when compared to a typical desktop app on most Linux WMs and on MS Windows.
If you want to know more about the details, or anything else, feel free to ask any questions you might have!
UPDATE:
I believe I may have found an easier way to dual-boot Linux with Android, and that consists of configuring a custom ROM that will put both kernels, and GRUB, on the board's eMMC, while the rootfs for both OSes is placed on the hard disk. Will be seeing how it works.
UPDATE:
I have almost completed the custom ROM! I have now both Android and at least the base system for Ubuntu 20.04 (Kernel 5.10.66) bootable with Android now storing user data on the hard drive; though I'm still running into some hardware initialization issues in the latter that are keeping me from actually installing the desktop system. With regard to the Ubuntu system, there is some interesting issue in that for some reason the provided SDK kernel, which I had to rebuild, seems to build more Android-like because it wants to look in "/vendor" for some things related seemingly to the networking facilities, and it is possible this is preventing me from bringing up wifi, which I need in order to download the rest of the system.
But lots of progress overall - it seems that a full-fledged ARM desktop running simultaneously Android and Ubuntu is within reach to be wrung from this board!
Ignore my request for an update in another post. Seems you like you moving along. I don't need dual boot, just a working Android 12 with GPlay and Chrome. Did you get Chrome to work?
mebalzer said:
Ignore my request for an update in another post. Seems you like you moving along. I don't need dual boot, just a working Android 12 with GPlay and Chrome. Did you get Chrome to work?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks. Yeah, I want to say that I have pretty successfully gotten Android 12 working on it for sure, but Ubuntu is proving much more difficult due to graphics support issues, and I'm not sure if it will be possible until RK3588 is supported in the mainline Linux kernel tree which is still something under development. And yes! I got Chrome to work Everything works, actually - it's great as an Android system, though obviously Android is kinda funny to use as a desktop OS. I am wondering if I can't get a "pseudo" Linux using something like Linux Deploy in lieu of running it natively, at least until the kernel development catches up with this new processor.
(FWIW, I'm posting this post from that machine while it is running A12. )
Good to see someone else is interested in it, though. What are you planning on using yours for?
Insofar as getting Android 12 to work w/GApps - it depends on if you want to do it purely on the eMMC or you want to also put user data on an attached hard drive like I did. In either case, the best option, I feel, is to create a custom ROM - I could provide custom ROMs for it for download, but don't know because of Google's licensing conditions around the GApps and have heard of people getting in trouble with Google for distributing custom ROMs for phones that have GApps in them. You basically need to unpack the stock Android image, unpack the "super.img", then load the apps from a package like NikGApps into the "product" partition (NOT "oem" - that was a big mistake), then repack everything and flash to the eMMC again. You will need the board SDK from Firefly for all this as it has the custom ROM-packing and flashing tools.
Alternatively, it is possible to manually install the NikGApps GApps using the Android console - as it's a fully unlocked system, obtaining root access is trivial: just put it into Developer mode and you will find the root access in the "Developer options..." menu under "System".
Shimmy99 said:
Insofar as getting Android 12 to work w/GApps - it depends on if you want to do it purely on the eMMC or you want to also put user data on an attached hard drive like I did. In either case, the best option, I feel, is to create a custom ROM - I could provide custom ROMs for it for download, but don't know because of Google's licensing conditions around the GApps and have heard of people getting in trouble with Google for distributing custom ROMs for phones that have GApps in them. You basically need to unpack the stock Android image, unpack the "super.img", then load the apps from a package like NikGApps into the "product" partition (NOT "oem" - that was a big mistake), then repack everything and flash to the eMMC again. You will need the board SDK from Firefly for all this as it has the custom ROM-packing and flashing tools.
Alternatively, it is possible to manually install the NikGApps GApps using the Android console - as it's a fully unlocked system, obtaining root access is trivial: just put it into Developer mode and you will find the root access in the "Developer options..." menu under "System".
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks I will keep this in mind. See my reply to you other reply on another post as well.
I would to run gplay as well please send me instruction the nikapps github doesnt say nothing