DroidScript working on the Raspberry Pi 3

[Dave Smart]

Guess what I've been doing all weekend?

Yes, playing with my Raspberry Pi 3 running Android Things and the great news is that (after some serious hacking) I've managed to get a version of DroidScript working on the Pi... Yay!

Android Things does not support the Android WebView yet, so I had to 'shoehorn' in a standalone instance of the V8 JavaScript engine to make this work, but it seems to be working fine and the WiFi editor is running nicely too, which means we can remotely program and debug the Pi which will be  especially useful when no screen connected to the Pi.... and no need to install Android Studio to create Pi Apps :)

Check this link out for more info on the Pi running Android things:- https://developer.android.com/things/hardware/raspberrypi.html

Now for my next trick:- Get the GPIO connector working ;)

UPDATE

-----------

I'll be releasing a preview alpha version of DS as soon as I can (next day or two hopefully). 

In the mean time if you want to try installing Android Things in preparation, then I suggest you use the standalone version of the ADB tools rather than the full version of Android Studio (because its huge and complicated).

Standalone ADB installers:-

     https://developer.android.com/studio/releases/platform-tools.html

Android Things installation instructions:-

    https://developer.android.com/things/hardware/raspberrypi.html

Note: You will need to connect your Pi3 to your home router initially via a Cat5 cable to get it a network address.  You can then use ADB from a PC/Mac on the same network to configure it for WiFi access using ADB, after that you can go wire free :)

Google have not yet enabled hardware acceleration on the Pi, so don't expect to play any games at a decent speed, but you can easily turn your Pi into a web server with the following lines of code

     

 serv = app.CreateWebServer( 8080, "Upload,ListDir" );
 serv.SetFolder( "/sdcard/DroidScript" );
 serv.Start();

You should in theory be able to access the GPIO through Linux memory mapped file read/writes, but I'll be adding the official Android Things libraries as soon as I can to make this simpler.

[Charles Wilt]

Very cool Dave.

If I had a PI 3 I would give you a hand. Perhaps some of my old work with PCDuino would be useful. ;-)

[luke x3]

Stumbled across these little gadgets recently, they are pretty darn cheap too
https://littlebirdelectronics.com.au/products/omega2-plus

[Symbroson Development]

Awww very nice Dave :D
Ill test it out as soon as I can :)

[Symbroson Development]

Hope you get it working quickly - eventually you could publish one version as alpha first?
But anyways thanks so much that you are working on this :)

[Regis Silva]

Dave, 

great, great !!! Always good news from Tech Team! 

You know guys, when I think n DroidScript I have the same feeling when I meat jQuery first time, it means, the world came to be so more simple and easy with these tools  :D  :D   :D

Hope to receive the good news that everything is totaly working in Raspiberry Pi and we have new plataform to create apps! :D

Regards!

Regis Silva

[Dave Smart]

[Thomas Johnson]

Dave, I've got one of these as well with androidthings on it. I've loaded a few programs on it, launcher, file browser, and some of the examples from the AT site. Works ok. I have had issues with settings constantly crashing. I also tried to install the playstore but it kept crashing. Not suprised since the AT site says the api doesn't support play store.

I'm curious what your thoughts are on it.

[Dave Smart]

It's early days for Android Things and these preview versions will be full of bugs... it can be painful on the bleeding edge!

Hopefully in a month or two it will be nice and stable though :)

[Thomas Johnson]

Dave do you have any information on what you had to do to get droidscript to run on the RPI3? where can i find the apk for droidscript to push to the rpi3?

[Dave Smart]

Sorry guys, this week has been a bit hectic.  I'm going to try and release an APK for the Pi this weekend (maybe even tonight).

I'm actually going to the the Raspberry Pi Big Birthday weekend on Saturday and I'm keen to tell everyone there about DS running on the Pi. If you are going too, then look out for the guy in the DroidScript T-shirt cos that will be me :)

https://www.raspberrypi.org/events/big-birthday-weekend-2017

Regards

David

[Dave Smart]

You can find APKs for DroidScript here:-

http://androidscript.org/apk