Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
If you press the Down button on the LCD Pi Plate, it will try to display the address for
wlan0 (if any).
While we know that the Raspberry Pi does not have built-in wireless networking sup-
port, it is common for people to add that support by connecting a USB wireless device.
While eth0 and wlan0 devices are hardcoded in our script, you can easily change them
if you'd prefer to display other networking devices. This code is simple: if you have a
basic understanding of Python, you should be able to figure out how it works. Feel free
to take what we've made and improve upon it!
Run Android on the Raspberry Pi
HACK 29
Read through this chapter and got tired of all the Linux? Or maybe you
just love Android. Either way, it's not impossible to run Android rather
than a Linux distribution on your Raspberry Pi, but this is a project for
the dedicated hackers.
The good news is that there is a community based around running Android on the
Raspberry Pi, which means if you've decided to give it a shot, there are people to whom
you can turn. They gather information on a wiki at
http://androidpi.wikia.com/wiki/
Android_Pi_Wiki
.
For a quick status check, log into their IRC channel, #razdroid, on
Freenode.
The bad news is that this isn't one of the faster moving communities you'll find. This
isn't a reflection on the community at all. Rather, the Raspberry Pi was simply not
designed for Android. In July 2012, Eben Moglen posted on the Raspberry Pi blog
about the progress on a
port of Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) for the Pi
.
Unfortu-
nately, that was well over a year ago as of this writing, and it is also the last update on
the subject. The Razdroid wiki now states “Very doubtful that any Android that will be
usable will ever be released.”
But even a nonfunctional system is an opportunity for learning, and learning is what
the Raspberry Pi was designed for. So if Android and Raspberry Pi both interest you,
there's no harm in giving it a shot. The worst outcome is that you say, “Well, that didn't
work,” which you expected from the beginning anyway. The best outcome is that you
learn something about the Android, the Pi, or both in the process.
Since that official Android built by Broadcom hasn't appeared yet, the working builds
are based on CyanogenMod, a popular replacement firmware for Android-based
