Book Image

Android Things Projects

By : Francesco Azzola
Book Image

Android Things Projects

By: Francesco Azzola

Overview of this book

Android Things makes developing connected embedded devices easy by providing the same Android development tools, best-in-class Android framework, and Google APIs that make developers successful on mobile. With this book, you will be able to take advantage of the new Android framework APIs to securely build projects using low-level components such as sensors, resistors, capacitors, and display controllers. This book will teach you all you need to know about working with Android Things through practical projects based on home automation, robotics, IoT, and so on. We’ll teach you to make the most of the Android Things and build enticing projects such as a smart greenhouse that controls the climate and environment automatically. You’ll also create an alarm system, integrate Android Things with IoT cloud platforms, and more. By the end of this book, you will know everything about Android Things, and you’ll have built some very cool projects using the latest technology that is driving the adoption of IoT. You will also have primed your mindset so that you can use your knowledge for profitable, practical projects.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)
Title Page
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Preface

Spying eye Android Things project overview


Before digging into the project details, it is worthwhile to have an overview of this project to know what we want to build and how it should work. The basic idea that stands behind this project is using a servo motor at the camera base. The camera and the motor are connected together so that while the Android Things app rotates the motor, we can change the camera orientation. By the way, a servomotor is a special motor type that we can control precisely in terms of its angular position.

The following figure visualizes the main project features:

As you can see from the preceding figure, in this project we want the Android Things board controlling the following at the same time:

  • The servomotor rotation
  • The camera that acquires the image

To access these features, this project exposes a simple UI interface. An important aspect is related to the camera support. Android Things supports CSI-2 protocol. There are some Android Things compatible boards that do...