RIot Board OS and application performance

It's hard to argue with the Wandboard, the single core version is cheaper than RIoT, but has less RAM. The Dual core costs slightly more but also includes Wifi & BT.

I'm not an android user, so can't comment there, but on the linux side the wandboard currently has better support than RIoT.  I have a couple of wandboard quads along with various other OLinuXinos, Cubieboards etc. and I consider the wandboards the best overall value although the OLinuXino-LIME is a close second.

I have gotten the Amazon App Store to work on the RIot. I have had no success with The play store after trying many different versions. No crashes so far with the pre-install.

Thank you, both, for replying.

That's good to know that the Google play store is not available.  Most of what I use either comes from the Amazon app store, or I sideload.

Of the boards that I have, I just flashed the NAND on my pcduino with Android, and XBMC, Firefox/Flash, as well as the other apps, all ran fine.  Even the user interface was quite responsive.  Since both the RIotBoard and the pcduino have a single core 1 ghz processor with 1 gb of ram, and since Mark had no problems, I would think the over performance of the RIotBoard should be just fine.

I am curious about the other Freescale board that Element14 is involved with; the dual core MarS Board.

Phillip Lineburg wrote:

I am curious about the other Freescale board that Element14 is involved with; the dual core MarS Board.

Just looking at the photos of the RIoT and MarS side by side makes me think they're very closely related.  I know that some of the i.MX6 range share the same footprint, so it's quite possible that a Dual Core version of the RIoT is just a BOM change should the single core be a problem.

Hi Philip,

My understanding with the Google Play Store is that it needs to run on Google Certified devices, which means they have to be locked down.

I imagine that this isn't appropriate for development kits such as the RIoTboard. This probably also means that typical Google services is also affected.

I finally ordered my RIoTboard late last week and it was delivered today.

My first impressions of the preinstalled Android are quite favorable.  I am having some issues with the audio sounding distorted and might reflash the NAND with a new Android image.  I'm going to wait and see if somone has seen this before, and has resolved it.  Maybe changing a line in the uEnv.txt file might fix it?

By distorted do you mean too low in pitch/ too slow in tempo? If so, then I also experience this on my new Riotboard, as well  as others. I don't have experience with Android so don't what the solution is.

Hi, Brian.

Yes, that is the exact same issue.

Christopher Stanton wrote:

 

My understanding with the Google Play Store is that it needs to run on Google Certified devices, which means they have to be locked down.

Actually, it seems that's not true.  However it appears that certain kernel configs/modules are required.

In the thread here https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/wandboard/rYMY0v5rIqE some people have the store working, including paid apps. Look for the last two messages on the 1st March.

The RIoT user manual says it comes with Android 4.3, and that appears to be what they're using. So seemingly no real reason you can't get it running on the RIoT with the correct config.

What it does highlight though is that instead of having wandboard/RIoT specific versions of Android (or linux generally) it's much better to have support of the board pushed into the mainstream Android (or linux) development tree. That way you can just build it and get all the correct settings to have everything work properly out of the box.

Personally I've little interest in Android, but remembered reading about needing some specific kernel config when this thread popped up again...  I'd suggest it'd be worth peoples time to at least skim some of the other forums external to here for SBC's like wandboard, the Olimex/sunxi mailing lists etc. It's amazing what hidden gems you can find

Thanks for the information selsinork, good find.