Book Image

Android Things Quick Start Guide

By : Raul Portales
5 (1)
Book Image

Android Things Quick Start Guide

5 (1)
By: Raul Portales

Overview of this book

Android Things is the IoT platform made by Google, based on Android. It allows us to build smart devices in a simple and convenient way, leveraging on the Android ecosystem tools and libraries, while letting Google take care of security updates. This book takes you through the basics of IoT and smart devices. It will help you to interact with common IoT device components and learn the underlying protocols. For a simple setup, we will be using Rainbow HAT so that we don't need to do any wiring. In the first chapter, you will learn about the Android Things platform, the design concepts behind it, and how it relates to other IoT frameworks. We will look at the Developer Kits and learn how to install Android Things on them by creating a simple project. Later, we will explore the real power of Android Things, learning how to make a UI, designing and communicating with companion apps in different ways, showcasing a few libraries. We will demonstrate libraries and you will see how powerful the Android Things operating system is.
Table of Contents (10 chapters)

Summary

We have covered quite some ground in this chapter. First, we looked at how to address the pins from code in a way that it works on both developer boards. Then we learned about GPIO as output, how to access LEDs directly, and how to use relays. We also explored GPIO as input, taking off several abstraction layers from Button reaching direct access to GPIO, which we then used for other sensors. Finally, we learned about more general ways in which GPIO is used by other components, such as DC motor controllers, stepper motors, distance sensors, and numeric displays.

It is time to move on to another protocol that is a bit more complex but also allows us to do more: PWM.