ebay and other chinese sites are offering these development boards but it is not clear how to program them.
Is there OS for these boards ? Linux ? Micro .NET ? Android ?
I have played with Ardiuno and it was fun. Arduino comes with IDE.
These boards are more powerful, have Cam and Ethernet.
Seems like more fun things could be done.
Please note I am hobbyist.
Basically, one of the language you can use is C. These boards can not support OS like Android because of the low operating frequency and limited memory.
I faced the same situation, and I ended up buying this Ltouch development board that have many interfaces and support Android. It works very good.
A good free book is this from Geoffrey Brown, Indiana University about the STM MCUs and how to program them.
Related
A few days ago, Arduino just released a "start pack" for Android developers: http://arduino.cc/en/Main/ArduinoBoardADK
The Arduino ADK is a microcontroller board based on the ATmega2560
(datasheet). It has a USB host interface to connect with Android based
phones, based on the MAX3421e
I have been searching again and again for tutorials or something in order to begin Arduino programming, and I am looking for very good tutorials, maybe some kind of "hello light" that would make a light blink on the card with a button on my Android device.
Have you got some links, fan blogs, other information about that topic?
I, of course, know the Arduino website and Android developer documentation, but they are quite over-complicated...
You are asking a two part question: (1) How do I program Arduino? (2) How do I use the Android ADK to do stuff with Arduino.
For part one you're going to need to get hardware since the Arduino site is pretty straightforward about how to get started.
Arduino Tutorial
For part two you're going to have to have a ADK compatible Android device which as of July 2011 is either a Nexus One, Nexus S, or Motorola Xoom.
If you have one of these devices, you'll need an Arduino which can run the ADK (see your question). And of course the best documentation is still
ADK Documentation
Just realize that you'll be writing two programs, one that runs on the Arduino in C/C++, the other on Android in Java.
Update:
Since you were asking for blogs or how-tos, MAKE does have some tutorial which may be what you are looking for at Makezine.
To write programs for the arduino, you can use simple C language commands in a development environment that is deliberately simplified. To write programs for your Android phone, you must really learn Java and learn how to use a sophisticated development environment like Eclipse. These are two very different programming skill levels.
You have an arduino and you have an android. You need to make them communicate. I would make 2 experiment projects. One project would have communication from the arduino to the android. The other android to the arduino. Once you have established some sort of communication technique, you can mod it how ever you want to reach the desired.
I was looking to create a mobile application for this handheld thermal printer device.
This application is Win CE based. Does anyone know if there is a similar device with Android O.S(Having printer and barcode reader) ?
The sourcecode for the zxing project is open source and fairly simple to use, could that not work for what you want?
Google code ZXing
As far as Im aware there aren't any devices such as that one, but it may happen later on down the line, if the manufacturers who sell those devices see Android as a viable / cost effective route to take (but this would involve losing all the investment in the windows CE platform)
I'm trying to chose the ARM development board for education purpose.
The goal is to learn how to run and play around with systems like Android (version 2.0 or higher),Linux, Windows CE. It must support touch-screen, Ethernet, USB host and device.
I've found many boards, the most interesting is Android6410. I've search Google and it seems that it is not very popular. Has anyone used it? Is it well documented? What about the support? How about the performance under Android?
I've also found some other development boards:
http://www.friendlyarm.net/products/mini2440?lang=en - the most popular one but probably it is too slow for android 2.0.
http://www.friendlyarm.net/products/mini6410?lang=en - the same CPU like Android6410 but it seems to be a new product so the support may be pretty bad
http://beagleboard.org/ - quite interesting and popular but no touch-screen in standard version. The external ones are very expensive (twice as expensive as the board itself)
http://pandaboard.org/ - very fast but also doesn't have standard touch-screen connector, no Windows CE support
Any hints will be appreciated.
Samsung has provided an android kernel, as well as a reasonably current "generic" linux kernel) that, amongst other Samsung SoCs, also supports the 6410. The Git repos are here:
https://android.googlesource.com/kernel/samsung
http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/kgene/linux-samsung.git
These do provide smdk6410 defconfig targets.
You also need an odroid bootloader (uboot for 6410) to be able to flash new kernels onto the board and/or the SDcard it boots from, as Samsung uses a special "fastboot" utility for this purpose (very different from OMAP which just puts the kernel into a file).
I can't comment on the performance of the device compared to others, as I haven't run extensive benchmark tests or anything, sorry. You're right, it's way ahead of 2440; it's an ARM1136 CPU, so it'll end up somewhat slower than the Cortex-A chips from omap3/4 boards.
Try the FL6410: http://www.arm9board.net/sel/prddetail.aspx?id=363&pid=200
A nice board with great Android support!
i want to have some knowledge on porting android on linux devices. I am a web and android developer but now i want to port android on some hardware which you could suggest is easy for the beginners to start with.
I don't feel like buying a mobile phone this time i want to make a mobile phone :)
Please help me achieve this goal.
regards
Abhishek Talwar
Well, what you're asking is pretty complex.
Do you want to BUILD your own cellphone from scratch?
This would take a lot of knowledge and development time. You could get some GSM development boards to experiment with that. Something like these:
http://www.sparkfun.com/search/results?term=gsm&what=products
You could get an Arduino and use one of the arduino linux ports. The arduino could handle the gsm module and an lcd screen.
This is extremely complicated though.
If its android porting you're interested in, I suggest just getting a mobile phone and then porting android to it. It WILL be complicated and you better get something you can easily develop for. Windows Mobile phones would be my suggestion as there are a lot of active programs to port android to those.
Does anyone know of a cheap Android or programmable device that has wifi?
I need it for a project for a company that needs a Wi-Fi handheld device for the shop floor.
I'm not too fussed about the language the device uses though I'm not really interested in the iTouch as there's no intention to release the app in the app store and I don`t really want to jail break everybody's iTouch.
Ideally it would be small, iTouch size for example and relatively cheap $100 or less. Nothing fancy, just ability to write a simple UI and have Wi-Fi. Voice is not needed.
Not too fussed about touch or qwerty keyboard either.
How cheap is cheap? On the weekend I searched eBay for "android slate" and found a bunch at US $99. I bought one immediately. It may not have the world's fastest CPU or a heap o' RAM, but at that price, how can I complain?
Like you, I want to develop apps for use in an industrial situation. I'll list voice as a feature if I use handphones, but don't really need it.
Would you please publish your final purchase decision here and I will likewise if I find a "better" option.
Bear in mind that it's not all about the cheapness of the device and consider the development effort.
Android has at least 2 good things going for it.
1) Generally programmed in Java (although you can use C & C++ if you jump through a few hoops). I may be wrong but it seems that new grads these days only know java (no offence intended to anyone reading this) and even "old hands" with C++ can quickly pick it up.
2) Android was designed from the start for developers and has an excellent development environment and good tools.
I bought a bunch of Android books and really liked Unlocking Android: A Developer's Guide, but you might want to check Amazon for readers 5 star votes.
And I have just noticed Android Wireless Application Development which I will have to buy; I think that you might benefit from it too.
Oh, and if you want to outsource any development at competitive rates ... ;-)
There were some cheap Android devices at http://dealextreme.com