hacking an android tablet to single function device

[Joseph Sinclair]

It is possible to kiosk an android device, and it doesn't require a special build.
The application must be an Android application, and must implement a certain interface.  Basically, you just replace the application that provides the home screen ("desktop" as you described it) with your own app that simply launches the kiosk application [1].
If you have an app in mind that doesn't work that way, just write your own app to fulfill the requirements then launch the app you want to run (or use one of several open-source demo/kiosk mode apps [2]).

The ARM support for "direct" execution of Java bytecode is a hardware acceleration technique, it does not change the requirement for a JVM.  In recent (e.g. ARM8 or later) chips it doesn't even provide a performance boost because the implementation is a trivial translation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_architecture#Jazelle).

I'm a bit time-constrained recently, but perhaps in late summer I could provide the instructional talk you've requested, I have to see how it looks in a few months.

==joseph++

Note: the below links are semi-random, I did not vet the applications due to time constraints, I just hunted down a few representative links, so DO NOT trust these links just because I list them.
[1] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5881373/is-it-possible-to-create-an-android-app-to-make-the-phone-run-in-sort-of-a-kiosk
    http://kiosk.automated.it/
    http://www.kioware.com/kwfws_android.aspx

[2] https://github.com/mitmel/Demo-Mode



On 05/04/2012 09:10 AM, Stephen wrote:
> I know usb and bluetooth device support was added as of gingerbread,
> wich is 2.3 so if your device is at least that current you will get
> that functionality.
> 
> as for "kiosk'ing" the device i am not sure, i do know you can launch
> an app on boot. but i have not delved into how that is done.
> 
> however there is no full jvm for android at this time, but in theory
> you can tailor an install of linux to run on arm and essentially use
> it instead and then you could add a jvm... i would suggest a distro
> that has an arm branch in their repo's or something that will use
> global environment variables to compile compatible code.
> 
> On Fri, May 4, 2012 at 8:53 AM, Steven A. DuChene
> <linux-clusters at mindspring.com> wrote:
>> Since Andriod tablets have become so cheap lately (Pandigital for $29.99 plus $4.99 shipping) I would like to see if it is possible to re-purpose one to do server as sort of a single function display device. Does anyone know if it would be possible to reconfig an Android tablet to NOT have a full desktop interface with icons and things and instead have it boot up to the display of a single application?
>>
>> Also I noticed some of these tablets use a ARM926EJ-S CPU that is supposed to enable the direct execution of 8-bit Java bytecode in hardware and has an MMU on the chip (not always a given for ARM CPUs). Does that mean it would be possible to run a standard Java application without the load of a full JVM? Is all compiled Java code end up being 8-bit bytecode that could be directly run on this CPU?
>>
>> Also I note that plugging a USB keyboard into an Android device does not seem to work. From what little I have read it is because USB host mode is not enabled in early versions of Android. It is possible to somehow either add this functionality via replacement kernel modules or perhaps even rebuild a new/different kernel for one of these devices to enable this? I have looked at some of the dmesg output from one of my el cheap'o tablets and I see some things happening there when I plug in a keyboard but not enough apparently.
>>
>> Anyway lots of questions about hacking Android tablets. Is this something like this possible to have a instructional talk on at a PLUGdev meeting at some point? I.E. from someone who knows a LOT more about this than I do?
>> --
>> Steven DuChene
>>
>>
>>
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> 

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