Setting up Platform for Project XiCam

I suppose the upside to the USB debacle is I now have a clean slate to start working on this project.  This isn't the most ideal starting point, but I now have an HP dv4 Notebook running the factory install of Windows Vista (circa 2008).  It has an Intel Core2 Duo 2.1GHz processor and 4GB RAM which should be good enough for my purposes here.  I have to remember how to get rid of the various annoying registration and update reminders which are all more or less pointless now, but I digress.

First step was install eclipse.  Went with the the standard version of the Kepler release, since I don't expect to do much outside of Java programming.  In fact, it probably would have made more sense to install the Java 7 SDK first, but it doesn't really make a difference.  Both installed and run without any problems.

Next step was to install VirtualBox so I have something to write lower level stuff in C/C++.  I used to use Cygwin, but that comes with some extra complications that I'd rather not deal with.  Running Linux in a VM not only gives you the desktop appearance but also adds a nice layer of protection to help keep you from doing anything really damaging to your computer (like muffing up your USB host controller).  I had intended to install Ubuntu 12.04 64-bit on the guest machine, but apparently 64-bit guests are not supported on this computer (it does, however work on 64-bit Windows 7 on the Intel quad-core I have at work, so I think this may be more an issue with the CPU on the notebook not supporting virtualization rather than an issue with VirtualBox).

Installed Ubuntu 10.04 for x86 architecture on the guest machine.  I may have to deal with the 800x600 screen, which actually isn't so terrible.  At least the USB 2.0 passthrough apparently works!

Ubuntu 10.04 running in VirtualBox with the mouse and camera showing up in lsusb.

Last, I installed the Android SDK plugin for Eclipse.  Release 19 (Kit Kat) is fairly recent and today is the first day I've noticed it in the SDK manager.  I would normally have installed the SDK for the last five or six releases so that I could check back-compatibility, but I just included this latest release for now.  I build a virtual device with the general specs of the ASUS tablet.  It runs pretty slow and takes several minutes to boot, so it may need some tweaking.

Tablet emulated using the Android SDK plugin in Eclipse.