Embedded Android? Not so fast!

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Austin Doyle
5 years ago
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1 Embedded Android? Not so fast! Ryan Kuester Independent Consultant These slides at

2 Contribute to discussion of Android s suitability for embedded work Demonstrate one way of using Android in an embedded system Q&A

3 Application framework Misc. Init Linux kernel Bootloader

4 Application framework Misc. Init Linux kernel fastboot protocol Bootloader

5 Application framework Misc. Init Linux kernel Bootloader

6 Application framework Misc. Init Linux kernel Bootloader

7 Application framework Misc. Init Linux kernel Bootloader

8 Enormously successful Productive and enjoyable environment for writing applications Java has great tools

11 Application framework excellent, e.g., modularity of activities and intents Users are familiar with Android GUIs Framework services address common needs: network, power, audio, management

12 Hardware Requirements Capable graphics (HW accelerated) Sufficient storage (300 MiB?) Kernel Requirements

13 Biggest Weakness Android couples the operating system choice to the GUI choice

14 Issues with Android as OS Software availability with build system Software compatibility with libc

15 Software compatibility with libc see bionic/libc/caveats not complete POSIX, only what Android needs, e.g.: no C++ exceptions no locales or wide chars missing functions like getpwd()

16 Issues with Android as OS Package management Field upgrades Build system SCM scheme

17 Issues with Android as OS Limited and less-than-open community of platform developers

18 You need to partition your solution in any case Running within Android framework is not suitable for some timesensitive code Can run code outside of framework, but not well-supported, and library challenges remain

21 Ideally we could just use the application framework Application framework framework Misc. Init Linux kernel Bootloader

22 but Android is architected and delivered as a tightly-coupled combination Application framework framework Misc. Init Linux kernel Bootloader

23 forcing us to keep it intact and put other software alongside it Application framework Libraries Embedded Linux OS Init Linux kernel Bootloader

24 Why, again? extra software libraries package management Embedded Linux OS tools

25 How? Some suggest injecting pre-built Embedded OS into Android build process Application framework Embedded Linux OS Misc. Init Linux kernel Bootloader

26 Backwards this leaves Android in charge of build process, package management, etc. Application framework Embedded Linux OS Misc. Init Linux kernel Bootloader

27 Proposal: treat Android as package within the Embedded Linux OS Embedded Linux OS Application framework Libraries Init Embedded Linux Init Linux kernel

28 Demonstration of this concept applied to the Nexus 7

29 How Android device storage is partitioned Application framework Misc. Init Linux kernel Normally don t touch this Bootloader # fastboot flash $IMAGE

30 How Android device storage is partitioned Application framework Misc. Init boot.img Linux kernel Bootloader # fastboot flash $IMAGE

31 How Android device storage is partitioned system.img Application framework Misc. Init Linux kernel Bootloader # fastboot flash $IMAGE

32 New kernel, new system image (now in userdata partition) Application framework Misc. Init Linux kernel Bootloader # fastboot flash $IMAGE

33 Nexus 7 kernel source: linux-n7 Android package source: android-n7-wifi-aosp

34 Android filesystem in chroot Embedded OS Android

35 Communication via kernel still works as always Embedded Linux OS Application framework Libraries Init Embedded Linux Init Linux kernel

36 Demos Console Android managed by systemd APK delivered by.deb package Android activity plus native daemon

37 Embedded Android? Not so fast! Ryan Kuester Independent Consultant These slides at

Developing on DragonBoard

Developing on DragonBoard Getting Started with APQ8060 and Pragmatux+Android Bill Gatliff bgat@billgatliff.com Ryan Kuester rkuester@insymbols.com 1 2 CPU Daughterboard APQ8060 ARMv7 Dual core 1.5 GHz