Abstract: Since the introduction of the open source Android platform for mobile phones by Google, there has been significant interest in the OEM community to also customize Android for other embedded platforms such as netbooks, set-top boxes, car dashboards and others. The advantage of making Android available to multiple device platforms would mean that an application developed for one device could easily be made available for another platform with minimal porting needs (consider for example, a TiVo recording client that is made available both on your set top box and one your phone - same application, same code but available on two devices to suit your mobility needs) Android is a Dalvik Virtual Machine based software platform that runs on a Linux based kernel. Therefore, to port an Android platform, one needs to port the underlying Linux OS and then the Android platform SDK as well. This document explains how to port the Android platform to custom ARM based boards. ARM is one of the most popular platforms for embedded devices. |