Good Morning from my Robotics Lab! This is Shadow_8472 with a side project of the week. Let’s get started!
Android Practice
I have been going without a smartphone for a while because I don’t accept Google’s terms of service. Apple is no better. The only option I’ll be happy with is one with nothing but open source software at its heart.
Unfortunately, 3rd party Android builds like LineageOS are infamously difficult and potentially a little unforgiving to install yourself. I need practice, which is why I installed an unofficial LineageOS build for the Raspberry Pi a couple months ago – right before I made an incomplete mad dash for assembling Button Mash into a proper home server.
I used balena Etcher to safely install a build of Android made for the Raspberry Pi 4 lineup built by Konsta [1].
The initial boot was a bit longer than reasonable, and there were some impressive graphical glitches I have never been able to reproduce since. It was a little wired using a mouse with Android menus – especially since I had no way to switch the mouse buttons to a more comfortable lefty configuration. My greatest impression was that there was nothing to do besides browse settings and the file system.
I wanted something a little more to present today, so I installed F-Droid, an app store for open source apps. The challenge wasn’t so much installation, but loading the .apk installation file where the file browser could see it. I had to plant a directory from within LineageOS and use the find command to locate it. Before moving the SD card back to the Pi 400 again, I changed the owner from root to the number 0 and made sure it had the needed permissions. Installation was smooth after that.
Only while doing this writeup did I realize this build was Android TV based. I expect to revisit this project with the correct installation.
Takeaway
I have no idea if this is supported at all beyond the efforts of KonstaT, or if it’s even anything more than a tech demo. While I would not recommend using a setup like this long term, it is still an excellent learning tool for where I am at right now.
Final Question
Have you ever used Android on something other than a smartphone or tablet?
I look forward to hearing your answers in the comments below or on my Discord server.
Work Cited
[1] Konsta, “Raspberry” konstakang.com, 2022. [Online]. Available: https://konstakang.com/devices/rpi4/. [Accessed May 2, 2022].