Hello all
for once this is not a category to publish some problems but a topic about a success story with the board
I have been playing with the board and different OSs as I wanted really an android with 3 particular applications : a way to stream movies and series, a radio streaming and a VPN. The specs of the M7 are great but as it is fairly new, there are gaps in the OS and in the different images.
At the end I went to Armbian and downloaded their version of Armbian for this board and it is fast. The first thing I did was to upgrade the OS and it runs now one of the modern kernels (6.10 I think). I had some trouble with some web browsers but at the end the epiphany-browser is well supported by the arm architecture and armbian. As the upgraded OS supports Wayland protocol (under gnome ) I thought it would be possible to run Waydroid as an emulation of android on this board.
I was able to install waydroid using the instructions on their website and it installed Lineage 17 on the board. The next thing was a bit more tricky as when trying to start waydroid nothing happened (default screen was not configured) I found I had to install “weston” onto the linux environment and start it once (!) Weston started a kind of terminal and it showed it had created a “wayland display”.
When I started waydroid it now showed a screen where the Lineage OS was started and then an android screen from where I was able to install 2 applications (video streaming and vpn) and run both of them (as if it was running natively on the hardware). Streaming was great (1K movies and series without a problem over a vpn link to a server somewhere in the world but there was a problem with the sound (not always but often) : the sound was distorted , lagging and it was impossible to understand what was said) … solution for that was : install pulsaudio utilities on the linux host and start that application. I modified the setting to have a bigger buffer not did not change any timings) and voila : the sound problem was gone in the android environment. I learned pulsaudio and the audoo implementation on waydroid has some sync issues but by using the pulsaudio utilities the problems are gone …
hopefully this helps people who were facing similar problems. I have now
- armbian based linux with the latest updates and kernel
- a armbian webbrowser (epiphany-browser) allowing me to connect to some radio channels and stream music (good quality) without any distortion nor breakups.
- a working lineage 17 android that works (most of the time)
- a vpn (I am using Private Internet Access since 2018)
- a streaming application allowing me to watch what I want :slight_smile
The installation is running 24h/7days and it is connected to wifi , bluetooth, a wireless combo keyboard (logitech) and a 32 inch computer screen