Android 4.2: Using HDMI On BeagleBone Black

Update: Directions on how to build Android for the BeagleBone Black are now available at http://icculus.org/~hendersa/android

After a bit of work, I have gotten Android (Jellybean 4.2.2) running on the BeagleBone Black with a 3.8.13 Linux kernel. This video is a capture that I took of the system running at 720x480 with a 16 BPP color depth. With a 3.8.x kernel, you won't need an add-on cape board to get audio and video output from the BBB, since all AV is sent out via the HDMI connection. LCD cape boards will still work, of course, if you want to use one as a touch screen display. SGX support (i.e. HW accelerated OpenGL libraries) is explicitly disabled, as SGX support is not yet available for the 3.8 kernel (though it should be available in the 3.2 kernel). On the bright side, with the 3.8 kernel you'll now be able to use the kernel's device tree mechanism to configure the multiplexing of the pins on the BBB's P8 and P9 connectors to set up your cape boards and other hardware projects that you want to interface with Android.

I have made an image of my Android system available for download. You can just "dd" the image onto a microSD card that is at least 4GB in size. Download it here: http://icculus.org/~hendersa/BBB_JB_Android_3_8_13.img.bz2

E-mail me with questions or concerns: hendersa (at) icculus.org

The background music is by Norato of the Newgrounds audio portal. Download this song, as well as many other excellent tunes of his, at:

http://norato.newgrounds.com