My Review of Embedded Android

Originally submitted at O'Reilly

Porting, Extending, and Customizing

Embedded Android

Great Embedded Android Resource

By Elinux from Salt Lake City, UT on 1/19/2012

 

4out of 5

Pros: Concise, Easy to understand, Accurate, Helpful examples, Well-written

Best Uses: Intermediate, Expert

Describe Yourself: Developer, Architect, Designer

I am involved in developing a headless android product and have asked many of the questions that this book answers.

(legalese)

Embedded Android Book

Karim Yaghmour is publishing another book through O-Reilly Media called Embedded Android. There is an early release out that you can get here:

http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920021094.do

I've skimmed through half the book and really like what I see so far. Given that Mr. Yaghmour is presenting at the Android Builders Summit on Headless Android, he is obviously very tuned in to the topic of this blog. I'll be buying a copy as soon as it's available in print format (or for the eReader of my choice).

Android Builders Summit

The Android Builders Summit in California on February 13-14th has a session dedicated to Headless Android by Karim Yaghmour from Opersys.

https://events.linuxfoundation.org/events/android-builders-summit

Analysis for Non-Phone Android Segment

TI put up a good reference document on supporting non-phone based Android products.

http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/Android_gingerbread_memory_analysis_for_non-phone_device

This is a good roundup of the space savings for non-phone devices. It is not meant as a headless Android writeup. I believe the intent was for tablets and other non-phone devices that still have a UI, but it's a good place to look for ideas and suggested savings of some of the telephony type applications.

Headless Android Logo

Here is my official Headless Android logo... I liked it.

I'm posting one with and without a white background.

White Background

Transparent Background

Let me know if you would like the originals, or larger versions.

OpenWRT and Android

OpenWRT is a great embedded Linux platform for building router software. It runs in very constrained environments with no user interface (UI). It is also an interesting candidate for headless Android, since most routers do not have a UI besides the web type configuration engine.

Back in 2009, Felix Fietkau attempted to build Android on OpenWRT. The routers that were available to run OpenWRT at the time were even more limited than today's models. Both OpenWRT and Android have matured considerably since then.

Felix original efforts can be found here:

http://nbd.name/blog/?p=36

He has a borg.git repository that is mentioned in that blog post where he has picked up work on this again. It's an interesting exercise and I wish him the best of luck in making progress on that port. It would be really handy to see a working Android on an OpenWRT platform.

Introductions and Formalities

I am an embedded Linux engineer working for a company that works with the Smart Grid. Recently we undertook a project to come up with a new Android based device that is low cost and does not have a screen. In looking at the many choices for operating framework, we decided that Android would be a great platform to build embedded software on.

Our main problem is that there is no really good information about running Android headless. Thus, this blog was born to chronicle our efforts to build a useful headless Android system.

In my opinion, after being involved in embedded Linux projects for around 10 years, Android will be the next major platform for embedded devices. Since Android is built on the Linux kernel, it is stable, open, and a fantastic choice for embedded designs.