Android/LineageOS on Raspberry Pi CM4 Core?

uConsole
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I’ve seen a number of projects for installing Android and LineageOS on the Raspberry Pi 4/400/CM4, and it seems to perform reasonably well. Everything on the CM4 seems to work, aside from hardware video decoding.

Do we know if there would be additional complications involved with running Android on a uConsole? I’m wondering if the Devterm included custom drivers for the screen, trackball and battery, or if everything was fairly standard and alternate OSes were easy to install.

3 Likes
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I hate to admit it, but as much as I really like Raspberry Pi OS myself (and use it on an RPi4 I have), to make the most out of the uConsole’s cellular modem, the OS is likely going to need to be LineageOS, if only to get the Android App specifically developed (often shoddily) by the Cellular Provider to install. The cellular provider’s website usually has very stripped-down functionality; unfortunately requiring the end user to install the Android/iOS app to get full functionality (and, of course, especially to show ads).

The Android app typically has those essential functions like:

  • topping up one’s cellular plan (say, to add more data GB in a month)
  • checking how many GB remain, and when exactly they will soon expire
  • renewing the cellular number for one more year’s subscription

…all these things are, at best, ugly, and at worst, brutally hard, to do over the USSD dial-up interface (done from the regular phone call dialler app, however that may look).

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I may not be safe to assume that LineageOS can utilize the uConsole’s specific wifi hardware, nor the cellular modem - in Android.

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I actually made an attempt because I wanted to use the ChatGPT app, so I considered implementing it through the Android system. I burned LineageOS 19 onto an SD card using rpi-imager. The steps should be correct, but when I inserted the card to start, there was no response

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I’m very curious to see if anyone can get it working. I don’t have my uConsole yet, but I will definitely give it a try when I do.

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Thanks for sharing your attempt. I don’t have my uConsole yet but I want to try Android on it too.
I took a peek at the uConsole repo, and I believe there will be more work needed to run LineageOS.

The hurdle here, at least - is how to make Android to recognize the LCD display. Part of the uConsole code base is about the “patch” that applies to linux image so that the OS knows how to drive the display. uConsole/Code/patch/cm4 at master · clockworkpi/uConsole (github.com)

We probably need someone with good knowledge on Android to make a “patch” to LineageOS so that the display and keyboard can be driven.

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Thanks a lot,maybe i will try later

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It seems like someone managed to get Android to run in a container in Raspberry Pi OS using Waydroid. From what I’ve heard, performance is almost native.

Running Android on top of Raspberry Pi OS might be worth investigating as a way to bypass issues with booting LineageOS directly? If it works, it should be possible to make it load at startup.