Live Android on Laptop or PC via LiveCD or USB

Try operating system Android is the desire of many technology enthusiasts. It's great if the test run it on your laptop or desktop PC without using any application that put what. The following method lets you run Android from external memory card or USB or CD on the real hardware of the computer.

 

Only need to download two files android-x86-1.6-r2.iso and UNetbootin.
Then install the following steps:
1. First prepare a USB storage space is at least 256Mb.
2. UNetbootin download by link: http://sourceforge.net/projects/unetbootin/
3. Download android-x86-1.6-r2.iso the link: http://www.android-x86.org/download

After completed download two files, let run file: UNetbootin-windows-377.exe
then select option Diskimage, click the sign (...) select the path to the file android-x86-1.6-r2.iso.
Select Type as USB driver, choose USB Driver you want to install Android OS.
Click Ok and everything has been installed for you.
- After installation is completed you need to adjust a bit in the BIOS of your PC at the Boot menu, you select the preferred boot from USB.
When your computer boots boot selection menu will appear: Live CD - Run Android-x86 without installation.

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Cortex-A15 Processor

The ARM Cortex™-A15 MPCore™ processor is the highest-performance licensable processor the industry has ever seen. It delivers unprecedented processing capability, combined with low power consumption to enable compelling products in markets ranging from smartphones, tablets, mobile computing, high-end digital home, servers and wireless infrastructure. The unique combination of performance, functionality, and power-efficiency provided by the Cortex-A15 MPCore processor reinforces ARM’s clear leadership position in these high-value and high-volume application segments.

Overview

The ARM Cortex™-A15 MPCore™ processor delivers unprecedented processing capability, combined with low power consumption to enable compelling products in a wide range of new and existing ARM markets ranging from mobile computing, high-end digital home, servers and wireless infrastructure.

The Cortex-A15 MPCore processor is the latest member of the Cortex-A series of processors, ensuring full application compatibility with all of the other highly acclaimed Cortex-A processors. This enables immediate access to an established developer and software ecosystem including Android™, Adobe® Flash® Player, Java Platform Standard Edition (Java SE), JavaFX, Linux, Microsoft Windows Embedded, Symbian and Ubuntu, along with more than 700 ARM Connected Community™ members providing applications software, hardware and software development tools, middleware and SoC design services.  

The Cortex-A15 MPCore processor has an out-of-order superscalar pipeline with a tightly-coupled low-latency level-2 cache which can be up to 4MB in size. Additional improvements in floating point and NEON™ media performance result in devices that deliver the next-generation user experience for consumers as well as high-performance computation for web infrastructure applications. 

It is expected that mobile configurations of the Cortex-A15 MPCore processor will deliver over five times the performance of today’s advanced smartphones. In advanced infrastructure applications, the Cortex-A15 running at up to 2.5GHz will enable highly scalable solutions within constantly shrinking energy, thermal and cost budgets

Applications:

• Advanced Smartphones
• Mobile Computing
• High-end Digital Home Entertainment
• Wireless Infrastructure
• Low-power Servers

The growing complexity of the Web2.0 centric devices is creating the requirement for devices to support multiple software personalities and combine disparate functionality. For this reason the Cortex-A15 MPCore processor introduces new technology from ARM that enables efficient handling of the complex software environments including full hardware virtualization, Large Physical Address Extensions (LPAE) addressing up to 1TB of memory as well as error correction capability for fault-tolerance and soft-fault recovery.

The Cortex-A15 MPCore processor is the first ARM processor to incorporate highly efficient hardware support for data management and arbitration, enabling multiple software environments and their applications to simultaneously access the system capabilities. This enables the realization of devices that are robust, with virtual environments that are isolated from each other.

By ARM

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FPGA tool on Android platform

Robei is the world smallest EDA tool for FPGA design and simulation. With this tool, you can design your hardware visually at anywhere, and view the simulation result through waveform. It is a tiny, fast software for hardware prototyping and verification.
Imagine that when you are waiting for a bus, on a business travel or laying on the bed, suddenly a genius idea for a piece of hardware showing to your mind, how can you implement it with just mobile phones or tablets? Robei runs on any Android platform, you can implement your design and test it immediately in such situation.
Currently, Robei released 2.1 version on Windows and Android platform. You can share the same model on android platform and windows platform.

Robei 3.0 already released Robei 3.0

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Android to Microcontroller via Bluetooth

1. Choose a bluetooth device for your microcontroller.
The first thing you need to do is decide which bluetooth device you want to use for your microcontroller. You will want a device that you can communicate with via the serial protocol.  I used the BlueSmirf Gold modem from Sparkfun.

You will probably have to solder some headers to the chip, I used male headers to make it simple to plug into my breadboard.

2.  Connect the bluetooth device to the microcontroller
To connect the bluetooth device, you will need to find the Rx and Tx pins on your microcontroller.  Make sure that you cross the wires by connecting the Rx pin from your bluetooth device to the Tx pin on the microcontroller, and the Tx pin from your bluetooth device to the Rx pin on the microcontroller.  You will want to look in your datasheet to make sure you are using the right pins.  If you are using an Arduino, the diagram below may be helpful.

3.  Configuring the Bluetooth Device
To configure the bluetooth device from a computer, it is helpful to have a USB to serial breakout board.  I use the following from Sparkfun:

The simplest way to hook this up to the bluetooth modem is by using the 4 pins located along the front. Make sure you cross the Tx and Rx wires.  The board above has a 3.3v pin that is powered via the USB when plugged into the computer.  The BlueSmirf above can also operate on 3.3v, so powering the BlueSmirf is as easy as running a wire from the 3.3v output of the USB device to the BlueSmirf.  Also, make sure you run a wire from the ground pin of the USB device to the BlueSmirf to give them a common ground.
Now that everything is connected you can use a program such as Hyperterminal or Tera Term to communicate with the bluetooth modem.  HyperTerminal may already be installed on your computer if you are using Win XP.  Whichever application you are using, create a new connection.  Make sure to select Serial Port and the desired COM port.  If you do not know which COM port to use, you should be able to find it by looking in the device manager.  Mine says USB to Serial Port (COM3).  You also need to configure the serial port connection to use the corect baud rate.  Remember, the default baud rate of the BlueSmirf is 115200.  If you are using a different bluetooth device you will want to check your data sheet to determine what the default baud rate is.
The following instructions are specific to the BlueSmirf.  If you have a different bluetooth device you will want to refer to your datasheet.
Now that everything is configured, type $$$ in the prompt.   If everything is wired up correctly, you will received a response of CMD.  If you are using the BlueSmirf, the status LED will start blinking rapidly.  Now type D and press enter.  This will display the current configuration settings.

If you want to change the baud rate (to 9600 for example) type SN,96 and press enter.  You should receive a response of AOK which signifies that the change was successful.  Again, type D to see the settings and verify that the baud rate is now 9600.

Once you have completed the change, type — to exit command mode and terminate the connection.  If you desire to make additional changes to the configuration that I have not covered here, you should be able to find detailed commands for the bluetooth device that you are using in the documentation.  For the BlueSmirf you can look here.
4.  Writing code for the microcontroller
Depending on the microcontoller you are using, this may or may not be a daunting task.  You will want to refer to your data sheet for specifics on how to set this up for your microcontoller.  One thing to remember is that you must use the baud rate that your device is configured to use.
Use the settings you have configured above to initialize the serial driver on your microcontroller.  If you are using an Arduino, this is as simple as writing Serial.begin(baudRate); in your setup function.
That’s it for Part 1.  At this point you should have a bluetooth device connected to your microcontroller and be able to read/write to it using a USB to serial breakout board such as the one I discussed above.  In Part 2 I will discuss how to interface this bluetooth device with an Android phone.  Hopefully the information above has been helpful, let me know if you have any questions.

By ryandebenham.com

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Open source Linux tablet showcases KDE Plasma Active technology

Members of the KDE Plasma Active community announced an open source tablet platform that runs the mobile-oriented version of KDE's Plasma UI layer on a MeeGo Linux-based "Mer" operating system. The seven-inch "Spark" tablet features a 1GHz AMLogic ARM Cortex-A9 processor with a Mali-400 GPU, offers 512MB of RAM, 4GB of internal storage, an SD slot, and a projected price of about 200 Euros ($262).

The Spark was announced with fairly minimal detail by KDE Plasma Active team member Aaron Seigo -- who has been on loan from the newly open source Qt Development Framework project to work on KDE Plasma Active. The latter is the KDE community's touch-friendly, mobile device version of the KDE desktop environment. (Long the leading competitor to GNOME on Linux desktops, KDE was upgraded last week version 4.8.)

 KDE Plasma Active 2

Like Michael Arrington's ill-fated CrunchPad, -- eventually reborn as Fusion Garage's commercial JooJoo tablet, the forerunner of the Grid-10 -- the Spark is billed as an entirely independent, open source Linux tablet platform. In his blog announcement, Seigo notes that "There's no walled garden to get locked into or which can be taken away."

This is an apparent reference to Amazon.com, which has been earning the ire of the open source community over its locked-down version of Android within the Kindle Fire tablet. (Flurry just released a report claiming the Fire has already eclipsed the entire installed base of the Samsung Galaxy Tab.)
Like the Kindle Fire, the Spark is a seven-inch capacitive tablet running on a Cortex-A9 processor. However, instead of a dual-core processor, the Spark offers Amlogic's single-core AML8726-M. The 1GHz system on chip (SoC) includes a Mali-400 graphics processing unit (GPU) and full 1080p video decoding, as detailed on this Amlogic AML8726-M product page.
Additional Spark features include 512MB of RAM, 4GB of internal storage, and microSD expansion, according to Seigo. In addition, the image shown above appears to indicate an HDMI port and dual mini-USB host ports. No manufacturer for the device was listed.
KDE Plasma Active 2 The hardware is secondary, however, to Spark's main focus: showcasing KDE Plasma Active. Intended as a fast embedded UX (user experience) platform with minimal memory requirements, KDE Plasma Active is designed for tablets, smartphones, and other touch-enabled devices such as set-top boxes, smart TVs, home automation equipment, or in-vehicle infotainment (IVI), says the project. 

                                                                 Spark tablet
The stack is notable for featuring an interface that adapts as users change KDE Activities, says the project. Additional features are said to include: a Peek&Launch bar to select applications or switch between them; touch-enabled apps and widgets; and a "Share-Like-Connect" function that "molds your computer to your preferences."
The KDE Plasma Active project is a collaboration between the KDE community, as well as development firm Basyskom and Open-slx GmbH. As noted, Qt, whose development framework underlies the Spark platform, is also a contributor to the Spark tablet effort.
MeeGo spin-off Mer involved in Spark project
Also collaborating on the Spark project is the Mer project -- a fork of the fading MeeGo project that was announced in October as an alternative to the MeeGo-based, Samsung-backed Tizen project. KDE Plasma Active runs on a foundation of either Mer, MeeGo, or Open-slx' Balsam Linux Professional 12.1.
Compared to Tizen, which Samsung says it plans to eventually merge with its Bada operating system, Mer appears to be a more independent, community-driven effort. Like Tizen, Mer adds a strong HTML5 component, but unlike Tizen, also retains the Qt framework. The Mer project says it plans to collaborate and share code with the Tizen project.
Seigo also notes that the Spark project is establishing partnerships with the KDE-backed OwnCloud hosting services, as well as two other KDE-related groupware efforts that will assist in "deployment support": Kolab and Kontact Touch. Seigo goes on to note there will be "exciting Qt/QML add-on apps for download," referring to the Javascript-based QML (Qt Meta-Object-Language), which is also incorporated in Mer.
In addition, the Spark tablet will offer "Free Culture artifacts," including digital books from Project Gutenberg, as well as contents and apps for purchase, writes Seigo.
Availability
The Spark tablet will ship soon for about 200 Euros (as of this moment, about $262), says Seigo, but more is expected to be revealed Jan. 31 on the same Aseigo blog where the Spark was announced. 

                                                                                                               Source by linuxfordevices.com

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