HTML5 performance on Linux

I believe that as a society, we have to stop saying that raspberry pis are powerful without adding “…considering their size and price” :sweat_smile:

I agree that there is a great potential, and the specs are reasonable on the high end model (compared to, say, an mid range android phone from 2015). But if I read another article saying “the new raspberry pi is closer to a desktop machine than ever before”, well… let’s just keep it relative.

Those 3 requirements should be solvable, but if not, and/or you want a small x86_64 device, you could get one of those compute sticks with Celeron CPUs, or one of those mini PCs inside a tiny cube.

They’re slightly bigger than a RasPi and I’m not sure if you can replace their Win10 installation.

Well first I am going to try and get and Android app working on the pi (I think getting the app to boot at start up will be the most complicated part, but I am going to try Emteria, whose free tier product includes a “kiosk mode”). So that really is a useful tip. If that doesn’t work, I will get a celeron mini-pc and either use it with windows or, if possible, linux.

update:
OK! I have installed Lineage OS and managed to get my app running!! I formally retract my previous statements about the power of Raspberry Pi.

I have one huge challenge remaining: I can’t get my gamepad (generic USB gamepad, a PlayerX PCB from pimoroni) to work. I am investigating now, any help would be greatly appreciated.

Update 2:
I have now got most of the buttons working on the pi with lineage on gamepadtester.com. I can rewire the buttons to get all of the buttons I need, but I still need to get the input into defold. I’ll check how android works with gamepads as I haven’t read the manual on this yet.

Update 3:
Project complete!
I ditched the playerX and i am now using a reprogrammed makey makey, which works like a normal keyboard, so the pi picks it up no problem. It also has arrow keys and a space bar, so it’s possible to navigate the UI and open the app, meaning that I don’t need to autorun it on boot. Performance is absolutely perfect (the pi gets nice and hot, too, which I assume is a good sign, right?). Doing it like this- with no hacks, legitimate Android app on a legitimate Android installation on an arm chip - is incredibly satisfying.

@masterneme, without your suggestion, I would never have considered an android installation. Thank you so much for that.

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No problem, I’m happy to help.

If the Pi gets too hot it will throttle hard so you may want to take care of that.

I might try underclocking, but first I want to check the temperature and see if it’s actually significant or not. 50° feels hot but isn’t actually too bad.

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