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Building a wireless Android device using BeagleBone Black #beagleboneblack @TXInstruments @beagleboneorg
Nikolay Elenkov wrote up this great tutorial on how to build a wireless Android device using a BeagleBone Black.
The BBB is fully capable of running Android and by adding off-the shelf peripherals you can easily turn it into a ‘tablet’ (of sorts) by adding a touch screen and wireless connectivity. While the required software is mostly available in the rowboat project, if you want to have the best hardware support you need to use BBB’s native 3.8 kernel and configure Android to use it. Making hardware fully available to the Android OS is mostly a matter of configuring the relevant HAL bits properly, but that is not always straightforward, even with board vendor provided documentation. The reason for this is that Android subsystems are not particularly cohesive — you need to modify multiple, sometimes seemingly unrelated, files at different locations to get a single subsystem working. This is, of course, not specific to Android and is the price to pay for building a system by integrating originally unrelated OSS projects. On the positive side, most components can be replaced and the required changes can usually be confined to the (sometimes loosely defined) Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL).
Each Tuesday is BeagleBone Black Day here Adafruit! What is the BeagleBone? The BeagleBones are a line of affordable single-board Linux computers (SBCs) created by Texas Instruments. New to the Bone? Grab one of our Adafruit BeagleBone Black Starter Packs and check out our extensive resources available on the Adafruit Learning System including a guide to setting up the Adafruit BeagleBone IO Python Library. We have a number of Bone accessories including add-on shields (called “capes”) and USB devices to help you do even more with your SBC. Need a nice display to go along with your Bone? Check out our fine selection of HDMI displays, we’ve tested all of them with the Beagle Bone Black!
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Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
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Python for Microcontrollers – Adafruit Daily — Python on Microcontrollers Newsletter: CircuitPython 2025 Wraps, Focus on Using Python, Open Source and More! #CircuitPython #Python #micropython @ThePSF @Raspberry_Pi
EYE on NPI – Adafruit Daily — EYE on NPI Maxim’s Himalaya uSLIC Step-Down Power Module #EyeOnNPI @maximintegrated @digikey