Open Source Android Development

[miguelvp]

Got an email from Element 14 about this board:

http://www.newark.com/riotboard/mcimx6-solo/i-mx6solo-iot-hdmi-multimedia/dp/07X2279

Datasheet:

http://www.farnell.com/datasheets/1791875.pdf

I already have several android devices for development but for $79 this looks pretty cool. I probably won't get it but just to spread out the word.
I've never heard of the i.MX 6Solo chip by freescale, since most of my devices are Tegra based, and no, I won't get the new Tegra K1 just yet, wel... maybe...
But I'm too busy with FPGAs so I might skip this iteration of Android devices.

But if you want an android desktop this kit might do the trick.

Not sure on the graphics performance so it's not that I'm recommending it, jut letting you all know about it's existence. What I know is that it only supports OpenGL ES 2.0. Most new tablets support 3.0 and the K1 supports the full (as in not ES) OpenGL 4.4 and DirectX 11 if you are running some windows flavor OS (will assume RT but i'm not proficient at all on mobile Windows).

Edit: Features

• Media Interfaces
    o Analog headphone/microphone, 3.5mm audio jack
    o LVDS interface
    o HDMI interface
    o Parallel RGB interface(Expansion port)
    o Camera interface (Support CCD or CMOS camera)
    o MIPI lanes at 1 Gbps

• Media Interfaces
    o Analog headphone/microphone, 3.5mm audio jack
    o LVDS interface
    o HDMI interface
    o Parallel RGB interface(Expansion port)
    o Camera interface (Support CCD or CMOS camera)
    o MIPI lanes at 1 Gbps

• Data Transfer Interfaces
    o Debug Ports:

         3 pin TTL level
    o Serial Ports:

         UART3,4,5, 3 line serial port, TTL Logic (Expansion port)
    o USB Ports:

         1 x USB2.0 OTG, mini USB, high-speed, 480Mbps

         4 x USB2.0 HOST, Type A, high-speed, 480Mbps
    o uSD card interface
    o SD card interface
    o 10M/100M/Gb Ethernet Interface (RJ45 jack)
    o 2 channel I2C interface (Expansion port)
    o 2 channel SPI interface (Expansion port)
    o 3 channel PWM interface (Expansion port)
    o GPIO (Expansion port)
    o 10-pin JTAG interface
    o Open SDA
 
• Others
    o 1 Power LED
    o 1 Open SDA LED
    o 2 User-defined LEDs
    o 1 DC Jack
    o 1 Reset button
    o Boot configuration interface

[neslekkim]

does it exists other android dev kits with better gpu/cpu and memory?, something like the samsung note3 etc would have been nice, in this formfactor so one could use it as android tv or similar..

[nctnico]

@miquelvp: that is an interesting post. I have a project in the pipeline where the customer wants to use Android. I was thinking of using an IMX6 because I have used that before. Knowing that the customer likes to do 3D graphics the Tegra chip may be a better choice. Any comments on how well the Tegra is supported?

[miguelvp]

The problem with Tegra boards is that they are not open source, so any driver updates need to come from Nvidia.

I do have my eye on the Jetson K1 but they don't have an official Android port for it but then again XDA members mention that it's easy since the K1 comes with Linux for Tegra (ubuntu I believe)

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2750589

More info on the K1 (btw it supports Direct X 12, not 11 like I mentioned before):
https://developer.nvidia.com/jetson-tk1

New egg has it for $182
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813190005

But as I said before, no open source, so CUDA for Android won't be available until Nvidia supports Android.

Also, users have ported Dolphin emulator for this board.

There is also an Unreal 4 demo from Epic but not sure on the details, just remember watching a youtube video.

Edit: Even if it's not open source Nvidia has a lot of information available about this kit:
https://developer.nvidia.com/jetson-tk1-support

[nctnico]

The drivers from Freescale to support the IMX6 accellerated graphics are not open source either. There is no difference there. I'm more concerned about the quality of the drivers and Linux kernel in general. In my experience the provided Linux kernels for SoCs always need some fixing and tweaking to get a production ready system.

[miguelvp]

Then the K1 might fit your bill, after all it has unified GPU cores, the same as in the GeForce video cards based on kepler. The only difference is that you only get 192 of those cores instead of several thousand in the high end video cards, but impressive nevertheless for a chip that is designed to run on batteries.

Not saying the dev board will run on batteries but it will have a lower power consumption, there are comparisons out there done by Nvidia so they might be a bit slanted.
 

[miguelvp]

No support for the Jetson K1 dev kit, but maybe the bits needed are in this:

https://developer.nvidia.com/tegra-android-development-pack

So as far as I can tell there is no official support or will ever be for the Jetson K1 dev kit to run Android.

[Nownuri]

This board seems to have MIPI ports. But does it mean you can use MIPI cameras? I wonder if you can write camera driver with this board, since other boards don't support it.

[Marco]

But as I said before, no open source, so CUDA for Android won't be available until Nvidia supports Android.

Are you even allowed on certified Android forks (ie. the ones which can be shipped with Google apps on phones) to open up new APIs into the kernel? I think the OpenCL crowd would have done it by now, OpenCL was useable on Android for a while before Google blocked it.