Raspberry + Android

Raspberry Pi 3 Repository Has Been Added to Android Open Source Project

How to Build an Android TV Box With a Raspberry Pi

Android Things: Raspberry Pi 3

Supported hardware

Raspberry Pi 3 Model B

• Broadcom BCM2837
• 1.2GHz quad-core ARM Cortex A53
• 1GB RAM
• MicroSD card slot
• 3.5mm Analog Output
• 10/100 Ethernet, Wi-Fi 802.11n (2.4GHz), Bluetooth® 4.1
• 4x USB 2.0 Host

Developer Kits

Get started with kits

Flash Android Things

Before you begin flashing, you will need the following items in addition to your Raspberry Pi:

• Micro-USB cable
• Ethernet cable
• MicroSD card reader and 8 GB or larger microSD card

Download an image from the Android Things Console and write it to the microSD card.

AOSP

android-o-mr1-iot-release-1.0.14

Getting AOSP

Customizing AOSP

creating a new Board Support Package

Device specific configuration is in:

 device/[organisation]/[product]

Build the Code

Select the one you want with command lunch command

$ source build/envsetup.sh
$ lunch [product]-eng

Base product is selected in device configuration by device.mk:

$(call inherit-product, $(SRC_TARGET_DIR)/product/aosp_base.mk)

Building AOSP

 m

When the build is over, you will find images in out/target/product/[product name]

Kernel

Android runs on top of Linux, you need a Linux kernel with the Android kernel patches.
For Raspberry Pi, use Konsta’s kernel:

$ git clone https://github.com/lineage-rpi/android_kernel_brcm_rpi3 -b lineage-15.1 rpi3
$ cd rpi3
$ make lineageos_rpi3_defconfig
$ make -j $(nproc) zImage
$ make dtbs

Booting the Raspberry Pi

Most Android devices have a bootloader that supports the fastboot protocol for flashing and booting images.
Raspberry Pi does not have such a bootloader.
Therefore, we have to package the kernel and initial ramdisk and use Broadcom loader to start Linux

Boot Partition

The RPi boots from the first partition of the SD card:

• Bootloader

bootcode.bin
fixup.dat
fixup_x.dat
start.elf
start_x.elf
config.txt

• Linux

cmdline.txt
bcm2710-rpi-3-b.dtb
overlays/
zImage

• Android

ramdisk.img

ADB

Raspberry Pi only has USB host ports, we can use ADB over Ethernet instead

$ adb connect Android.local
connected to Android.local:5555

References

• Building Android for Raspberry Pi