Presentation at October SG Android Developer Meetup by Jeff Pang. Jeff Pang shows us how you can build your own Android Tablet using BeagleBone and a capacitive touch screen. BeagleBone is an $89 MSRP, credit-card-sized Linux computer that connects to the Internet and runs software such as Android 4.0 and Ubuntu. With plenty of I/O and processing power for real-time analysis provided by an AM335x 720MHz ARM® processor, BeagleBone can be complemented with cape plug-in boards to augment functionality.

2. Overview
The simple way to BYOT
The harder way

3. Introduction
Beaglebone Black (Texas Instrument)
Load it with Android
Install Chipsee Capacitive Touch Cape

4. Difficulty Levels
Different ways to do it, at varying difficulty levels:
1. Level: Easy
2. Level: Hard (Offers more features)
3. Level: Ninja!!! (Do crazy stuff)

5. The easy way
Make bootable SD (min 2GB)
Mount Chipsee Touch Screen Cape
Boot up

6. Specs
1. Android Jelly Bean 4.1.2
2. Linux 3.2
3. ADB
4. SGX Graphics Accelerator

7. Android
Linux Kernel
Bootloader

8. Components
1. Bootloader
•
U-boot.img
•
MLO
2. Kernel
•
uImage
3. Android Filesystem
•
Rootfs

9. Making bootable SD
Make sure rootfs the correct archive type
depending on mkmmc-android.sh
Tip: bunzip2 -c < file.tar.bz2 | gzip -c > file.tar.gz
Check SD card’s mount
Run script
$ sudo ./mkmmc-android.sh /dev/sdX

12. The hard way
Compiling from source
Choose Android version (Rowboat? TI? Chipsee?)
Choose Kernel version (3.2, 3.8 , 3.12)
Choose boot-loader (u-boot, fastboot)
Choose download method
From Gitorious
From Pre-packaged source from TI
From Pre-packaged source from Chipsee

13. Preparation
1. Install JDK 6
•
Some complications here
2. Install packages (apt-get)
3. Install Repo (if getting from Git)

14. Toolbox (Optional)
FTDI (Chip) Cable, used for Console Output in
debugging
(USB to TTL) 3.3v or 5v
USB to RS232 to USB Cable

15. Build Host Requirements
Simple? Not quite…
1. x64 Ubuntu 10.x or above (12.04 recc)
2. 100GB disk space and 4GB RAM
3. Virtual Machine (Optional)
4. Lots of time and patience

16. Tools (Optional)
FDTI (Chip) Cable for console
output/debugging
USB to TTL (3.3v or 5v)
USB to RS232

17. Steps
Prep Host
Download sources
Customise (Optional)
Build (make commands)
u-boot
Kernel
Android (Do this last, trust me …)
Copy Chipsee Additions
Make SD Card

18. Install Packages
$ sudo apt-get install git-core gnupg flex bison gperf build-essential
zip curl libc6-dev libncurses5-dev:i386 x11proto-core-dev
libx11-dev:i386 libreadline6-dev:i386 libgl1-mesa-dri:i386 libgl1mesa-glx:i386
libgl1-mesa-dev g++-multilib mingw32 openjdk-6-jdk tofrodos
python-markdown libxml2-utils xsltproc zlib1g-dev:i386
minicom tftpd uboot-mkimage expect
$ sudo ln -s /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/mesa/libGL.so.1 /usr/lib/i386-linuxgnu/libGL.so

19. Install JDK 6
Register and login at Oracle
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javasebusiness/downloads/ja
va-archive-downloads-javase6-419409.html
Download and unpack jdk-6u45-linuxx64.bin from Oracle
$ chmod a+x jdk6u45-linux-x64.bin
$ cd .jdk6u45-linux-x64.bin

20. Install JDK 6 (cont.)
Install java update tool from Google
$ sudo mkdir /usr/lib/jvm
$ sudo mv jdk.1.6.0.45
$ sudo wget http://webupd8.googlecode.com/files/update-java-0.5b
$ sudo chmod +x update-java-0.5b
$ sudo ./update-java-0.5b

21. Install JDK (cont.)
If you want to get source from Rowboat, install
Repo
$ mkdir bin
$ PATH=~/bin:$PATH
$ sudo bash -c "curl http://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/git-$
repo-downloads/repo > ~/bin/repo
$ sudo chmod a+x ~/bin/repo

22. Setup toolchain
Set Path
$ export PATH=<android-src>/prebuilts/gcc/linux-x86/arm/arm-eabi4.6/bin:$PATH

23. U-Boot
Download Source or use pre-packed
*patch if using Kernel 3.8 or higher
$ wget https://raw.github.com/eewiki/u-bootpatches/master/v2013.04/0001-am335x_evm-uEnv.txt-bootz-nfixes.patch
$ patch -p1 < 0001-am335x_evm-uEnv.txt-bootz-n-fixes.patch

24. U-boot
Build
$ make CROSS_COMPILE=arm-eabi- distclean
$ make CROSS_COMPILE=arm-eabi- am335x_evm_config
$ make CROSS_COMPILE=arm-eabi- -j<N>
<N> is the number of cores x 2 for faster compilation

25. Kernel Options
Kernel 3.2 (Maintained by TI)
No Device Tree Support
Git or pre-packaged source
Kernel 3.8 and above (Linux mainlining project)
No SGX Support
3.12 recently added

26. *Kernel 3.8 and 3.12
Checkout the source (3.8 and 3.12)
$ git clone git://github.com/RobertCNelson/linux-dev.git
$ cd linux-dev
$ git checkout origin/am33x-v3.8 -b tmp
$ ./build_kernel.sh

27. Kernel 3.2
Found in source from TI (or Chipsee’s)
$ cd linux
$ make CROSS_COMPILE=arm-eabi- distclean
$ make CROSS_COMPILE=arm-eabi- am335x_evm_android_defconfig
$ make CROSS_COMPILE=arm-eabi- uImage -j<N>
<N> is the number of cores x 2 for faster compilation

28. Build Android Filesystem
Build Android
$ cd ~/<android-src>
make TARGET_PRODUCT=am335xevm_sk OMAPES=4.x
Wait…
Wait…
Wait…
ZZzzz …

29. Create Boot Script
Create a file uEnv.txt with contents
bootargs=console=ttyO0,115200n8
androidboot.console=ttyO0 mem=256M root=/dev/mmcblk0p2
rw rootfstype=ext4 rootwait init=/init ip=off bootcmd=mmc
rescan ; fatload mmc 0 81000000 uImage ; bootm 81000000
uenvcmd=boot

30. Make bootable SD
Copy files to tmp location and make Tarball
$ cd ~/<android-src>
$ make TARGET_PRODUCT=am335xevm_sk fs_tarball
$ cp <uEnv-location>/uEnv.txt image/boot
$ cp kernel/arch/arm/boot/uImage image/boot
$ cp u-boot/u-boot.img image/boot
$ cp u-boot/MLO image/boot
$ cp out/target/product/a,335xevm_sk/rootfs.tar.bz2 image
Follow the instructions described previously to
make bootable SD

31. *WiFi
1. WiFi (RTL8188CUS Chipset)
1. More downloads and builds 
2. SoftAP/WiFi hotspot and WiFi Direct
3. Default Linux Wl2xx chipset drivers

32. It’s a wrap!
For cheap prototypes…
Custom build for enterprise/industrial
applications
Frustrated with Emulators and VMs?
Peeking under the pants hood of Android

33. More Information
TI Website
Rowboat Project
Robert C Nelson
My (almost defunct) Website
www.colormecode.com

34. Where to buy
RS Components (Singapore)
http://singapore.rs-online.com/web/
Beaglebone Black
USB-TTL (Optional)
USB to RS232 (Optional but recommended)
Chipsee Capacitive
http://www.chipsee.com/
Ships to Singapore for about SG$40

35. Where to download
Android
https://gitorious.org/rowboat
http://www.ti.com/lsds/ti/tools-software/android.page
Chipsee CD
Kernel 3.8 and 3.12
https://github.com/RobertCNelson/linux-dev
Chipsee CD
U-Boot
git://git.denx.de/u-boot.git
Chipsee CD