[Android] Eclair NITDroid (WIP)
 

I tried building Android 2.0 (Eclair) last night and getting it working using the amazing work of solca et. al as a base.

I've got it booting and the UI functional - no WiFi or battery yet (just some loader issues) and clock seems to work when it feels like it (this one's weirder - the clocksetter sets the clock properly but Android seems to be ignoring it sometimes) - the bootscripts need some work as well as some vars aren't set and the system doesn't boot completely without a few kicks from an adb shell.

With some patches to the Eclair source (to avoid using PMEM for the framebuffer, and to avoid using pageflipping as the LCD hardware gets crashy with it in for some reason) solca's existing compiled kernel works fine with the 2.0 code. I might try to make PMEM and a new kernel work later on, as it'd probably help with graphics speed, but I don't have a working OMAP kernel tree/build system right now.

Seems a little faster than 1.5, even though it currently has a very dumb framebuffer setup and vold won't start (so some media servers spin looking for it and slow things down). Fairly "stable" so far too - once it's booted it seems to stay up without freezes or random watchdog/memory error reboots.

Once I've got WiFi, battery, and clock working (should be fairly straightforward from here) I'll post a patch and rootfs and people can get hacking - currently it's not a Google device config so it doesn't have the Google apps (like the coveted Maps+Navigation etc.).

Re: [Android] Eclair NITDroid (WIP)
 

Sound still not working then?

Re: [Android] Eclair NITDroid (WIP)
 

It would be much more interesting to go the other way. To get Maemo running on Motorola Droid/Milestone.

Maemo is the more open of the two platforms:
http://cool900.blogspot.com/2009/10/...d-android.html

But unfortunately, I am guessing it is also more tightly tied to Nokia hardware...

Re: [Android] Eclair NITDroid (WIP)
 

As you suggested in your previous thread, I assume this is for your N810?

Re: [Android] Eclair NITDroid (WIP)
 

It'd be easier to get Mer to run on Droid/Milestone than Maemo. And you don't have to worry about Nokia sending a cease & desist too.

Re: [Android] Eclair NITDroid (WIP)
 

No sound yet - I'm exploring it a little but I'm trying to get things stable first.
And yes, it's my N810 - should work on N800 as well (same kernel). N770 is probably a no-go - Android "requires" 128MB and the lowest anyone's gotten 1.6 or 2.0 to run usably in is isn't much less.
For what it's worth, 2.0 easily maxes out the 128MB in the N810 running the browser, and as you approach the RAM ceiling things get slower as the garbage collector has to run all the time.

Re: [Android] Eclair NITDroid (WIP)
 

Just a question - have you got the n810 bluetooth working? Something I'm pretty sure didn't work in NITdroid.

Re: [Android] Eclair NITDroid (WIP)
 

Yes, the question everyone wants to know... Can you pick up where Solca stopped? Can you solve any of the problems that stumped him?

Re: [Android] Eclair NITDroid (WIP)
 

I can't say for sure - it's not like I can come in and claim I'm going to have Bluetooth, Sound, GPS, and a Holy Grail before I've even got any of it working.

I'll lay out my steps so far and for the next few days (this weekend - then it's back to school and work and I won't have much time - I'll be sure to post patches for those who want to pick up wherever I leave off), for those interested:

So far I've commented out the PMEM-dependent framebuffer code and disabled pageflipping to get a UI to come up so I can debug. I've made a new init.rc and bootscripts which (similar to solca's) load the WiFi driver, start the watchdog kicker, and attempt to initialize the DSP. I've modified a bit of the userland to enable file-based battery polling (again similar to but not exactly like solca's work).

My next steps are:

Download the latest linux-omap tree and latest android tree and merge+build them. This way I won't have to work around old stuff in solca's kernel (i.e. no pmem). UPDATE: This is going to take a little bit (expected) - Android OMAP kernel is based on 2.6.29 while linux-omap got a *lot* of changes I really really want (i.e. native retu watchdog support, new graphics, etc.) even after 2.6.31, so I'll have to rebase Android on latest linux-omap (others have done 2.6.31 rebases for other devices before, so it should be possible) and get everything together.

See if I can get PMEM-based framebuffer to work and if the newer kernel doesn't crash with pageflipping. This will improve UI performance a lot if it happens. Since the OMAP2 graphics framework was almost entirely refactored between about linux-omap 2.6.28 and 2.6.32 I suspect there will at least be different bugs now.

Patch the remainder of the userspace to get things stable (mostly keymaps, which are currently crashing).

Explore audio - it looks like solca et. al. were experimenting with ALSA configs, and it's probably mostly a matter of getting Android to understand how to route the audio. UPDATE: Every other Android device uses the ALSA SoC driver, and the N810 is supported nicely now in ALSA SoC too! I think things should be pretty straightforward once I get the kernel working.

Explore Bluetooth - if I can get the kernel to cooperate, this should be very straightforward as Android uses a quite-standard bluez-based BT stack. Unfortunately it looks Bluetooth got shuffled around a lot in linux-omap lately so things are less certain.

Explore GPS - Haven't looked into it yet, so I can't say anything.

Re: [Android] Eclair NITDroid (WIP)
 

http://jkkmobile.blogspot.com/2009/1...arket-and.html

Perhaps this would help with getting the "google experience" onto NITdroid..with the android market place :)