Getting Android adb working with Pipo Smart S1

The Pipo Smart S1 is a 7" Android 4.1 tablet that costs under $100.  It works great and is quite fast.   It's comparable to the Nexus 7" at half the price.  I changed the firmware to rev3 with instructions from TopNotchTablets.  This download also got rid of the apps that had Chinese language, giving a more comfortable user experience.

The CPU is a Rockwell RK3066 1.6GHz chip.

Rooting the tablet and upgrading the firmware was fast and painless.

Getting the tablet to work with the Android Debug Bridge (adb) was trickier.

Pygame Subset for Android (PGS4A) relies on adb that is included in the platform-tools sub-directory of the Android SDK.

android-sdk/platform-tools$ ls aapt aidl dexdump fastboot llvm-rs-cc renderscript adb api dx lib NOTICE.txt source.properties


When I first connected the Pipo Smart S1 tablet to my Ubuntu box with a micro USB cable, the build worked, but the install failed.

After figuring out how to use adb, I started to use adb devices to see the connected devices.  It wasn't detecting the tablet.


I found out that adb needs a USB Vendor ID to work properly.  Pipo wasn't listed as a vendor.   I found that the Vendor ID for the RK3066 chip is 0x2207.

Using the Android Developer documentation on Hardware Devices, I created the file /etc/udev/rules.d/51-android.rules and inserted this:


SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTR{idVendor}=="0x2207", MODE="0666", GROUP="plugdev"

It still wasn't working for me.  I had USB debugging enabled on my tablet.

I then added the vendor ID code to ~/.android/adb_usb.ini

:~/.android$ cat adb_usb.ini 

# ANDROID 3RD PARTY USB VENDOR ID LIST -- DO NOT EDIT.

# USE 'android update adb' TO GENERATE.

# 1 USB VENDOR ID PER LINE.

0x2207

It's still not happening.  I check out lsusb and see some hope that the device is detected.  

$ lsusb Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub Bus 001 Device 002: ID 8087:0024 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub Bus 002 Device 002: ID 8087:0024 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0409:005a NEC Corp. HighSpeed Hub Bus 001 Device 004: ID 06a3:8021 Saitek PLC Eclipse II Keyboard Bus 001 Device 005: ID 046d:c016 Logitech, Inc. Optical Wheel Mouse Bus 001 Device 006: ID 046d:c218 Logitech, Inc. Logitech RumblePad 2 USB Bus 001 Device 020: ID 2207:0010

I turn off wifi from the tablet.

I run adb devices again.


$ ./adb devices
List of devices attached 
???????????? no permissions

There's a bit more life.  I run it again as sudo.

$ sudo ./adb devices

[sudo] password for craig: 

List of devices attached 

???????????? no permissions

No go.

I kill the server. Then start it as root.

$ sudo ./adb devices

* daemon not running. starting it now on port 5037 *

* daemon started successfully *

List of devices attached 

ZX7U17M3NX device

It found the device!

I build the Python app:

$ ./android.py build dad/dad_image release install

install:

     [echo] Installing /home/c/Documents/python/pgs4a-0.9.4/bin/dad_image-1-release.apk onto default emulator or device...

     [exec] 5391 KB/s (2741472 bytes in 0.496s)

     [exec] pkg: /data/local/tmp/dad_image-1-release.apk

     [exec] Success

BUILD SUCCESSFUL

Total time: 8 seconds

It looks like the build succeeded.  

Here's a screenshot of the game running on the Pipo Smart S1, transferred using a USB cable with adb.

After I got this working, I worked with my son, my only computer programming student,  to get a similar game working on his LG Optimus S phone.  The main learning points today:

• using .append to fill a list of objects.   The list target_group contains all the enemies and all the bombs.
• Set up triggers based on elapsed time use list slicing to control the number of targets on the screen.

###statement to determine the levels current_target = target_group if clock.elapsed(1) < 35: current_target = current_target[:5] if clock.elapsed(1) < 27: current_target = current_target[:4] if clock.elapsed(1) < 19: current_target = current_target[:3] if clock.elapsed(1) < 11: current_target = current_target[:2] if clock.elapsed(1) < 5: current_target = current_target[:1] windowSurface.fill(game.color.BLACK) for targ in current_target:

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After I wrote the blog post, I also found this  on slatedroid.com.  It covers many of the same steps.  I'm not sure if shutting off WiFi is needed.  The person below also seems to have adb working without having to run the adb server as root.  I may fiddle around with more things in the future.  The main thing is that I can connect my tablet to adb in debug mode and install the apk files easily.

Posted 21 November 2012 - 08:31 PM

Just a few tips to those are trying to connect to a RK3066 via ADB on linux.

• Download & Install SDK
• Edit udev rules (see step #3), the RK3066 Vendor ID is 2207
• Restart udev (udevadm control --reload-rules)
• Edit $HOME/.android/adb_usb.ini, add 0x2207 at the end of the file
• Restart adb server (adb kill-server && adb start-server)
• Plug & List your device (adb devices)

At step #2, you should get something like this

SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTR{idVendor}=="2207", MODE="0666", GROUP="plugdev"

At step #4, you should get something like this

# ANDROID 3RD PARTY USB VENDOR ID LIST -- DO NOT EDIT.
# USE 'android update adb' TO GENERATE.
# 1 USB VENDOR ID PER LINE.
0x2207