Project Idea

GoogleGroups
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Well I have been looking at the Raspberry Pi (I hope that’s not a swear word in here) for a while now for a couple projects I had in mind. However, I came across Beaglebone and it seems the Beaglebone Black may be the perfect solution to one of my projects. Here is some background. I am a storm spotter/chaser and the more info I have access to the better I can be out in the field. I am planning on mounting my Android tablet in my car to be used as either GPS or my weather radar, which I have a few apps already to do that.

Well after kicking around the idea of a Raspberry Pi (man i really hope I’m not swearing) it seems its much harder to find a good live weather radar app for Linux. Well when I saw that the Beaglebone Black can have the Android OS installed on it I was like “WTH? FOR REAL?” type of excited. So I guess there are a few things I am curious about to see if this really could be my true answer to my project.

  1. How do you go about installing Android? I mean I know I don’t have the Beaglebone Black yet, but just curious about the process.
  2. Is Android pretty easy to install for a n00b?
  3. Once Android is installed and setup, Im assuming I just configure me gmail account like I have done with my smartphone and tablet and this is going to give me access to all of my apps on my Google Store account?
  4. Because the Beaglebone Black supports the Android OS, does this mean that most/all of my apps will run on it to with no/few issues?
  5. For my application, I would like to use a Blutooth keyboard and separate Blutooth touch pad mouse. Will I beable to do both of those if I am running the Android OS?
  6. Lastly, and Ill stop being the question filled n00b, I would also like to have GPS hoocked up to the Beaglebone Black because I have google apps that can track each one of us out in the field so we know where different people are in relation to the storm. Is there a “Cape” that will give me GPS and what I need for that?

Thank you very much for any and all the help.
Crazy8

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http://circuitco.com/support/index.php?title=BeagleBone_GPS/GPRS_Cape
But they have not released yet.
Also USB GPS dongles exist. Don't know if Android works with them.

Can't say nothing about android questions.

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Does anyone have any other thoughts or ideas on these?

Thanks for the help

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There is now an android img for Beaglebone Black. But whether or not a gps would work is unknown to me.

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Also, I am still attempting to configure my bluetooth dongle on this img. It is detected as a Physical keyboard, though, s it should work.

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For the record, there has been an android image for the BBB since its release to the general public. That and others got just about every flavor of Linux working on the Hardware is short order. Read as: a couple weeks tops. BSD as I understood works out of the box on the hardware, but I have never put this to the test.