i'm cc'ing the mailing list so others can have access to discussion.
if by virtualization you are thinking the android emulator, i would
not recommend that approach. it's slow and hardware support is
non-existent. if you are thinking android in virtualbox/qemu, i doubt
hardware support is any good (but i could be wrong).
if you have android running natively on a platform, odk should work.
access to camera, bluetooth, gps, etc is dependent on what the driver
support the manufacturer has and the custom build of android you are
running. the more popular the device, the more likely it is to work.
for example the galaxy tablet works pretty well. android-x86, i've
never heard of...
that said, there is nothing inherent to odk that would prevent it from
running on the platforms you describe. in the case of camera and gps,
if android can see it, we can see it. it might not work out of the box
with odk, but the changes to add that support will likely be trivial
(line or two of code).
hope that helps,
yaw
···
On Fri, Dec 10, 2010 at 08:40, Rui Leite wrote:
> Hello Yaw,
>
> I'm not sure if you recall, but last year we exchanged some e-mail
> messages about the use of ODK Collect on the Google phones for a project
> of UPenn in South Africa.
>
> We are preparing a new round of the survey and we're also looking into other
> devices (tablets and/or netbooks running Android natively or inside a
> virtual machine).
>
> Would ODK run fine in these alternative setups? And would it be able to
> access the hardware of those devices tablets/netbooks? I'm guessing that in
> the case of virtualization this depends on the mapping of the hardware into
> the VM, but that shouldn't be a problem on the tablets, right?
>
> For the netbooks we were thinking of using Android-x86. Have you ever had
> the chance to work with this port of Android? What do you think of it in
> terms of stability/reliability?
>
> Since we were using the GPS and camera capabilities in our surveys, we were
> wondering if in any of the setups above would ODK be able to get data from
> the tablets/netbooks' integrated webcam, or from an external/USB GPS reader
> that we plug into a netbook? That is, assuming Android has access to those
>
> If you could share your thoughts on this it would be very helpful and
> greatly appreciated!
>
> Best,
> Rui
>
I am not sure if my first reply had a delay in appearing or not but I
did not see it so I am sorry if there happens to be a double post.
I have access to a laptop which dual boots android (http:// reviews.cnet.co.uk/netbooks/acer-aspire-one-d250-android-
review-49304344/) and in theory should have access to all the
hardware, however upon downloading ODK collect onto that system I
found that the sound and video recording widgets both did not work (it
has no gps input so was unable to test this) upon downloading another
voice recording app I found that this was a problem within the system.
I am sure that, due to the openness of android, it is possible however
some work will have to be done with the system and will probably
involve rooting which I am reluctant to do on the laptop as it does
not belong to me. Seeing as how the problem is within the android
system I am sure someone at xda-developers would be able to solve it.I
also tried connecting a mic externally (despite one being built in) to
no avail.
I find the idea of running it on a virtual machine interesting so will
try it out and post the results.
···
On Dec 10, 5:14 pm, Yaw Anokwa wrote:
> rui and helena,
>
> i'm cc'ing the mailing list so others can have access to discussion.
>
> if by virtualization you are thinking the android emulator, i would
> not recommend that approach. it's slow and hardware support is
> non-existent. if you are thinking android in virtualbox/qemu, i doubt
> hardware support is any good (but i could be wrong).
>
> if you have android running natively on a platform, odk should work.
> access to camera, bluetooth, gps, etc is dependent on what the driver
> support the manufacturer has and the custom build of android you are
> running. the more popular the device, the more likely it is to work.
> for example the galaxy tablet works pretty well. android-x86, i've
> never heard of...
>
> that said, there is nothing inherent to odk that would prevent it from
> running on the platforms you describe. in the case of camera and gps,
> if android can see it, we can see it. it might not work out of the box
> with odk, but the changes to add that support will likely be trivial
> (line or two of code).
>
> hope that helps,
>
> yaw
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Fri, Dec 10, 2010 at 08:40, Rui Leite wrote:
> > Hello Yaw,
>
> > I'm not sure if you recall, but last year we exchanged some e-mail
> > messages about the use of ODK Collect on the Google phones for a project
> > of UPenn in South Africa.
>
> > We are preparing a new round of the survey and we're also looking into other
> > devices (tablets and/or netbooks running Android natively or inside a
> > virtual machine).
>
> > Would ODK run fine in these alternative setups? And would it be able to
> > access the hardware of those devices tablets/netbooks? I'm guessing that in
> > the case of virtualization this depends on the mapping of the hardware into
> > the VM, but that shouldn't be a problem on the tablets, right?
>
> > For the netbooks we were thinking of using Android-x86. Have you ever had
> > the chance to work with this port of Android? What do you think of it in
> > terms of stability/reliability?
>
> > Since we were using the GPS and camera capabilities in our surveys, we were
> > wondering if in any of the setups above would ODK be able to get data from
> > the tablets/netbooks' integrated webcam, or from an external/USB GPS reader
> > that we plug into a netbook? That is, assuming Android has access to those
>
> > If you could share your thoughts on this it would be very helpful and
> > greatly appreciated!
>
> > Best,
> > Rui