During this project I created a new student lab environment for future courses in Embedded Systems and Android development. Starting point was a Beagleboard xM single-board computer running Android 4 which was extended with various peripherals and interfaces. I documented some of the work in the blog posts below.
Some Android ready devices do not ship with any wireless modules on board. The easiest way to upgrade them for Bluetooth or WiFi connectivity are USB dongles.
I tried myself using a Beagleboard xM (runnign Android ICS) and a Bluetooth USB dongle with a Broadcom BCM2045 chip. Unfortunately it is not just a matter of plug and play, especially not on the kernel that ships with the rowboat Android port....
Android 2.3 relies on driver side input calibration and does not offer any calibration tools on its own, which can be a problem when using generic drivers or several devices with the same driver. This guide shows how to add a common 5 point touch input calibration to the Android system.
Obtaining and validating calibration values The first step is to acquire the calibration values. tslib comes with a variety of useful tools to find and test calibration parameters....
For one of my university projects I was working on a Beagleboard and managed to install an Android system that runs on a USB DisplayLink touchscreen. The setup was a Lilliput UM-80/C/T DisplayLink screen connected to a Beagleboard xM running the TI Android DevKit 2.1 build.
Installing a pre-built image Starting point is a clean pre-built image. It allows us to check that our hardware is set up correctly and, more importantly, provides the full Android filesystem and a configured boot loader....