USB Audio on BBBAndroid - Is this supported?

[Graham Middleton]

I have been attempting to implement a sound record / playback application on a Rev C BeagleBone Black using the latest BBBAndroid image.

I have run into a brick wall. I am a self-confessed Android newbie, so any ideas/pointers from 'ye experts would be much appreciated.

To date, I have:

- Verified that the hardware is good by taking Android out of the equation.

  (I verified audio playback/record to/from a USB headset, using the Gnome media sound recorder on the latest BeagleBoard Debian installation).

- Verified that BBBAndroid recognizes the USB device (I see it in the log; also I have found that when I click on the headset's volume control, the Android's volume slider is displayed)

- Written a couple of USBAudio demo applications that can record and playback an mp4, or wav file.

  (These have been failures - I have tried different implementations using the MediaPlayer, MediaRecorder and AudioRecord classes ... read on).

What I have found:

a) The audio playback app  generates no sound, either to the HDMI monitor, or a USB headset.

    (actually, the BBB is completely mute, no notification sounds, no sound playback ... it is quiet as a mouse).

b) The sound recorder app does create a wav, or mp4 file, but the file just contains rubbish.

I think that there could be something mis-configured in the Android build, but I can't put my finger on it.  For grins, I did set up the build environment and tried setting BOARD_USES_GENERIC_AUDIO to true in the BoardConfig.mk file, but it made no difference ... of course :-)

Has anyone managed to get USB Audio to work on BBBAndroid?

Thanks in advance,

Graham