The Dragonboard 410C from Arrow has been certified for Windows 10 IoT-Core. It comes though with the Android OS installed. Whilst a subsequent blog will cover the Windows 10 installation to it, this blog focuses upon getting a feel for the board’s capabilities and how to use it in the Android context. This will then will lead to expectations of the board’s functional capabilities in the IoT-Core context for the next blog. The previous blog covered the board’s features.
First time boot may take several minutes during which time it will set up apps etc. I found subsequent boots take about 50 seconds.
The Start Screen will say “Swipe up” and you’re into the Home Screen. You can do that if you have a touch screen. With a mouse you can swipe up with the left button pressed; similarly with a touchpad. There is also a suggestion that the spacebar on the keypad suffices.
When the Home Screen times out a mouse button click or keyboard press returns it. If it has been too long you need to swipe up again.
The Android OS supports the option of having multiple Start Screens. You swipe to left or right to move between them. Note for all Home Screens , the Favorites Bar and Action Bar are visible. This device comes with three such screens:
At the very top, ever-present, is the status bar. The status bar is persistent in that it rarely leaves the display, except in some full-screen applications. The status bar displays important information including time, signal (Wi-Fi/mobile data), notifications such as texts and e-mails.
On my system (TV display) this was chopped off.
This can be pulled down from the top and shows the Date & Time. You can also access the current and other user settings as well directly access The Quick Access Panel to turn WiFi, Bluetooth and other services off/on. There is also a brightness control with the latter functionality.
The Favorites Tray allows you to pin certain apps such as your contacts and phone dialer so that no matter what home screen you are on, you can always access them. By default, the five items you see in order from left to right are Phone, Contacts, Setup, Messaging and Chrome.
At the bottom of your device is the “Action bar,” which like the status bar, never goes away, even when it seems as though it has.
You should always see these three navigation elements wherever you are on your device. The first one means “Go Back”, the second brings up the Home Screen and the third brings up all of the recent app Windows in a rotating scrolling manner.
Finally, there’s the app drawer. This is the centre icon on the app tray that opens up the place where all your apps shortcuts are located.
From here you can open them, uninstall, or pin shortcuts to the home screen.
I found that I could pair the following:
I found I could not pair the following:
In the diagram above, from bottom left of the board, the right most push button is the power button. Pressing this will put the device into suspend. It can also be used to resume. Also, pressing this button for more than x seconds (that’s what the documentation says) will turn the device off.
Comment: I found that pressing this for several seconds caused a dialog to pop up offering to power off which it did if clicked upon. Once shutdown, pressing this button did restart the device. If though you held that button down for about 15-20 seconds the device did shutdown without the need for further user intervention.
The other two push buttons’ main function is volume up and down or zoom in/out depending upon the app context. The middle button has a secondary role:A button press with duration of less than 10 second will be interpreted by software as a volume down or zoom out request. Duration of more than 10 seconds will cause a system reset. (
Comment: I found that this reset didn't method work. (Volume up and down did work though for playing media).
The board documentation says that HDMI Audio and BT Audio are available. I found that the both worked out-the-box. With a music file (.wav) placed on an SD card, it would play when access via the File Explorer. By default, the music played through the TV (HDMI audio). If a BT audio device was connected (BT Speaker or Headset) then the audio was automatically directed through that.
There is also a capability to implement analog audio for a speaker or headset through the Analog Bus. See: Stereo Connector and Audio Routing Application Note
With a video file mounted on an SD card, video playback with audio worked extremely well. Was able to watch a full length movie.
Got "Hello World" running on board, in Android mode. Developed with Android Studio. Big issue with the USB OTG driver on PC end. Will blog here once I have it all down pat.