Android ICS with GL acceleration on the EfikaMX SmartTop (NOT SMARTBOOK)
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DISCLAIMER: This is just a tech demo, and in no way, shape or form a finished
or supported Genesi product. We are working on this extremely hard, and hope to
have something more polished soon but we wanted to show what we have so far.
Do not expect any support from Genesi. If it does not work for you, feel free
to post in this thread, or log on to the #EFIKA channel @Freenode to tell us
about it, or even better, offer a hand! However, do not expect any answers to
your questions. This software is pre-alpha at best...
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Download link: http://www.powerdeveloper.org/asset/by-id/134 and also under :
http://www.powerdeveloper.org/platforms/efikamx/android

This assumes an EfikaMX with a debug board plugged in for serial console access,
and an HDMI monitor (1280x720 is forced). You can run without the debug board as
well, but you won't be able to tell what is happening or if something isn't working
and has some other limitations.

1) Download the .img

2) Grab a 2G card (4G is safer, the 2G card I have reports at 2G, some report at
1.8G)

3) extract .img file, unxz android-ics-efikamx.img.xz
a) Verify
88836b14e34b0586d45eb288cf220385 android-ics-efikamx.img (md5sum)
59fc4ddd505f5bfae690ac3992120c47c548db356b8df0f2f4c560af5a50ec01 android-ics-efikamx.img (sha256)

4) write .img file to sdcard, dd if=android-ics-efikamx.img of=/dev/mmcblk0 (or whatever your SD card is)

5) Start your serial console session, screen /dev/ttyUSB0 115200

6) Plug sdcard into EfikaMX

7) Turn on Efika, watch serial output.

8) Plug mouse/keyboard in to EfikaMX

9) Play with ICS with hardware accelerated interface.



Known issues:
No wifi
- This is possibly simple to fix.
No audio
- This needs to be completely re-written as Gingerbread->ICS audio is
massively different. Alsa is considered deprecated, and OpenSLES is what
you're supposed to use.
No web browsing
- This is somewhat false. It's possible to get wired ethernet working via
serial console, running the command 'dhcpcd -d -o6 -BKL eth0'
- DNS entries are hard-coded to 8.8.8.8 and 4.2.2.1
- The hardware rendering however breaks the view of the browser, this is still
being investigated.

Task switcher (third icon from the left on the home screen) appears broken.
- This is being investigated.

Some live wallpapers may or may not work.

When the screen locks you will need to unplug and re-plug your
mouse/keyboard. Input is disabled once the lock screen happens.
- Re-inserting input devices automatically unlocks Android.
- Workaround somewhat is to turn increase the timeout of the lock screen to 30
minutes.

Timezone is set to default GMT.

If you follow the instructions above to get networking, it's possible to connect
to the machine with adb via something similar to the following:
(on your host machine)
adb start-server
adb connect 10.0.0.107
adb <command>(shell, logcat, so forth)



--
Thanks go especially to Ahmed and Steev for making this tech demo happen!
Thanks also go to the entire Genesi Software Team - You Guys Rock!



Johan.

_________________
Johan Dams, Genesi USA Inc.
Director, Software Engineering

Yep, I have a blog... PurpleAlienPlanet

Will there be a version also for the smartbook? That's a lot more easy to take with me for a demo :)
Also, I never tried HDMI, only DVI (with a HDMI->DVI cable), as I don't have any HDMI capable devices. Could that work?

_________________
CzP
http://czanik.blogs.balabit.com/

it worked fine for me on my old Philips 19" 1280x1024 DVI monitor with a hdmi->DVI adaptor. :)

This worked for me just fine on a Samsung 22" at 1680x1050. Or rather that's its native resolution. I don't know what the tech demo actually used. I was using a HDMI to DVI cable.

Is there anymore progress on this? Is this going to eventually end up as a buildable project hosted somewhere? I think it would be great.


Thanks.

bump... :twisted:

Hi.

At this time it is only a tech demo. While we have some plans with regard to Android in the near future, nothing is set in stone at this point (read: it will depend on our customers).
The 3D part of the Android Tech Demo is using some proprietary Freescale libraries. We're not planning to release this any time soon as a buildable project. As said, it is a tech demo without support, etc.


Johan.

_________________
Johan Dams, Genesi USA Inc.
Director, Software Engineering

Yep, I have a blog... PurpleAlienPlanet

Well there should at least be a kernel (source) release for that tech demo, correct?

**bump** ????

Not yet.

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Steev Klimaszewski, Genesi USA Inc.
Senior Software Engineer

The kernel source is here;

http://github.com/genesi/linux-legacy/

There's not much difference besides the Android patches. What were you planning on doing with the kernel source?

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Matt Sealey