Oracle releases JDK for Linux ARM (Soft-Float Only)

Oracle announced the availability of JDK 7 Update 6 which introduces a JDK for Linux on ARM v6 and v7 architecture. This JDK is aimed at “general purpose” ARM systems, such as ARM micro-servers and ARM development platforms. This new JDK for Linux on ARM is licensed under the Oracle Binary Code License, and can be downloaded at no cost for development and production use on general-purpose platforms. For embedded use such as an industrial controller or a kiosk appliance, a commercial license would be required. Here’s how Oracle summarizes the ARM Linux JDK features: This port provides 32-bit binary for ARMv6 and v7, with full support for Swing/AWT, both client (C1) and server (C2) compilers and runs on most Linux distributions. One caveat is that the current binary is softfloat ABI only, so it won’t work with (for example) the Raspbian distribution which uses the hardfloat ABI. We are […]

HardKernel ODroid-X Review with Android 4.0.4

Following my ODroid-X unboxing and first boot post, I planned to review ODroid-X board with both Android and Ubuntu. However, I found out that an Ubuntu image will only be released later this week, so I’ll focus on Android review for today, and try Ubuntu once it becomes available. The default firmware come with a few standards applications, and an ODROID app that: Provide links to developer resources Features a file explorer Has a WiFi section that show WiFi information such as signal strength and let you test the network performance Has a GPS section (useless for this board) Has a Sensor section, but there are none in ODROID-X. Has a camera section that let you show the camera input. It works with the module provided Has a others section with 3D compass test (not used for ODROID-X) The Dev Tools application is also installed. But there was not really […]

Installing Android SDK on Ubuntu 12.04

The official instructions to install Android SDK do not appear to be really up-to-date for Ubuntu 12.04, so I’ll post how I’ve installed the Android SDK and Eclipse on Ubuntu 12.04. First download and decompress Android SDK for Linux:

on 64-bit Ubuntu:

Sun Java is not part of Ubuntu packages anymore, so you’ll need to use openjdk instead

Now install the SDK

Android SDK Manager should show up. Use the default recommended packages and platforms, as well as any extra packages you may need, and click on Install x packages, accept all licenses and after installation is complete, the Android SDK is installed. Eclipse IDE is optional, but it’s the most widely used IDE to develop Android apps. You can install Eclipse as follows:

Once both Android packages and platforms, and eclipse are installed, start eclipse:

Then in the top menu, click on Help->Install […]

Google Announces Android 4.1 Jelly Bean and Releases SDK

Google I/O has begun, and several major announcements have been made including the release of Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean), Google Nexus 7 tablet featuring an Nvidia Tegra 3 processor and running Android 4.1, and the Google Nexus Q media player based on TI OMAP4460 processing and running Android 4.0 ICS. I’ll write about all those announcements today in three different posts. Let’s start with Android 4.1 Jelly Bean. The new version of Google’s mobile operating system includes a smoother and more responsive UI, a home screen that automatically adapts to fit your content, a better predictive keyboard, more interactive notifications, improved Android Beam (NFC) sharing, improved voice dictation (now works offline) and more. Here’s a summary of the key technical changes to Android 4.1: Faster, smoother and more responsive Vsync timing will be used for all drawing and animations to ensure a constant framerate (~62.5 fps). Triple buffering is used […]

Qualcomm Announces Snapdragon SDK 1.0 for Android

Qualcomm has announced the Snapdragon SDK for Android at the Uplinq 2012 developers conference, and a preview release of the SDK is now available on Qualcomm’s developer site. The full SDK will be available to device manufacturers and developers in the coming months. The Snapdragon SDK for Android enables developers to features of Snapdragon processors via Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) not otherwise available in the stock Android SDK including: Snapdragon Audio SDK (new) Snapdragon Camera SDK (new) Snapdragon Sensors SDK (new) Adreno GPU sample code for OpenGL ES FastCV SDK – Mobile-optimized Computer Vision  (CV) library Supposedly, there is also IZat Location SDK, but it did not show up in the list when I tried it. At first, the SDK will only support devices build around Snapdragon S4 8960 processor, but the company expects to support future Snapdragon processors over time. The Snapdragon SDK for Android allows developers to take […]

Collabora and Fluendo Release GStreamer SDK 2012.5 Amazon

Last week, Collabora and Fluendo jointly announced the release of an open source software development kit (SDK ) for GStreamer multimedia framework. The SDK aims at easing the integration of Gstreamer  into projects and provides a pre-built version of the framework which is available for Linux, Windows and Mac OS X. GStreamer is used in many Linux applications such as media players (Rhythmbox, Banshee and Amarok),  video editors (PitiVi), and media centers such as XBMC among other applications. It’s also often the framework used to play videos on ARM platforms with implementations for OMAP 4/5 and devices compliant with the OpenMAX standard. Gstreamer website has also been updated and provides links to download GStreamer SDK and documentation on the home page. The new documentation looks pretty good with fives main sections: Instructions for installing the SDK on Linux (Ubuntu, Debian and Fedora), Windows or Mac OS. 11 basic and 2 advanced tutorials. […]

Android NDK Revision 8 Adds MIPS Architecture Support

Google has just released Android Native Development Kit Revision 8, the Android SDK that allows developers to reuse C/C++ code. This version adds support for MIPS architecture and fixes a few bugs. Here’s the changelog of the new features and most important bug fixes: Added support for the MIPS ABI, which allows you to generate machine code that runs on compatible MIPS-based Android devices. Major features for MIPS include MIPS-specific toolchains, system headers, libraries and debugging support. For more details regarding MIPS support, see docs/CPU-MIPS.htmlin the NDK package. Fixed a typo in GAbi++ implementation. Fixed an issue in which make-standalone-toolchain.sh fails to copy libsupc++.*. You can download Android NDK version 8 to develop native apps for MIPS or take advantage of the new bug fixes. Previously, MIPS provided the Android NDK on their own website, but this version might be phased out, as MIPS support is now part of  the […]

Tizen 1.0 SDK and Source Code Release

The Tizen Technical Steering Group has announced, today, the release of Tizen 1.0 “Larkspur”. Tizen 1.0 release provides several new SDK features and improvements including: Simulator: A new browser-based tool that supports the Tizen APIs and allows you to run and debug your web applications, and simulate running applications with various device profiles. IDE: Enhancements include more flexibility around templates and debugging tools. Emulator: Significantly improved emulator performance through Intel’s Hardware Acceleration Manager for Windows and OpenGL acceleration for Linux. Updates to the platform source code include: Web: Support for additional features of W3C/HTML5 specification Location: Support for POI (Point of Interest) and route search Connectivity: Wi-Fi Direct key features added You can see the full list of changes by reading the release notes for the SDK and the source code. Tizen has also added a bug tracker and a wiki for the community and a few back-end changes have been […]

EmbeddedTS embedded systems design