There are thousands of uses for the Raspberry Pi: you can use the credit card-sized computer to build an arcade machine, an internet radio, or even a mobile phone.

These have been bolstered further with the Pi 3's built in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. The wireless communication methods have meant more devices can interact with the personal computer than ever before.


But what would make the Pi and Pi Zero even more versatile? The support of Google's operating system, Android.

Since a new tree was opened for Raspberry Pi in Google's Android Open Source Project repository in April, the possibility of the OS working on the devices is increasingly possible.

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Eben Upton, the founder of the Raspberry Pi foundation, told WIRED soon after the repository was identified that it would be "encouraging" for support to be created. In June, Upton, who has produced more than 8 million Pi devices, making it the UK's highest selling computer of all time, was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the Queen's Birthday list.

Speaking about the potential support of Raspberry Pi on the Android platform he said: "It's a promising sign and a nice compliment to the open source community."


Upton added that even though he would like to see Android working on Pi he, or his staff, haven't had time to develop support themselves as the foundation is focusing on devices and producing as many as possible.

However, he did say any inclusion would "bring a vast amount of content to the platform and we'll take it as it comes". It's believed Android users – the operating system is used on both Android phones and tablets – have the choice of more than two million apps to download.

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Matt Brailsford – who blogs under Circuitbeard and created a retro arcade machine from a Pi – said Android would make the Pi appeal to a new audience of developers.


"Given the wealth of libraries, add-ons and apps for the Android OS, I would assume that would make a lot of these reusable on the PI which again may open up some pretty interesting doors, and with mobile dev being the big thing right now, it could bring in some pretty interesting people to the community with some fresh ideas," he said.

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The development of support for different platforms for the Pi is a fairly common one. In 2015 Microsoft announced it was bringing Windows 10 for the Internet of Things to the Pi.

Developers from the company, which has recently purchased LinkedIn, demonstrated a B15 robot that was being powered by a Pi 2. In addition, the Microsoft researchers combined a holographic version of the robot with the physical one using the firm's HoloLens.

After the initial rollout, Microsoft has kept up its IoT support of Raspberry Pi. When the Pi 3 was released the developer tools were almost instantly upgraded to support Wi-FI, with Bluetooth support also said to be following.


Raspbain the officially supported operating system for the Pi is a free system that comes pre-installed with "more than 35,000 packages, pre-compiled software bundled in a nice format for easy installation". Although, Raspbian isn't affiliated with the Pi Foundation and was created by a small team of developers.

Brailsford did urge some caution around Android being developed for Pi. Describing the Microsoft IoT impact on Pi, he said he hadn't seen "any significant waves beyond it's immediate developer community."

"It will definitely be interesting to see if Android can crack the maker community where Windows has struggled, or whether they will have a similar fate and just be a means for Android devs to play with the Pi, but the mainstream maker community stick with the Linux OS."