Chapter 1, Turn On the Engines, walks you through the setup of the UDOO platform and the required development environment. It begins with an introduction of the board, showing its peculiarity and capabilities that distinguish it from the others; then it guides you through the installation of the Android operating system. The last part, explains how to configure the development environment, both for Arduino and Android, to launch the first Hello World Android application.

Chapter 2, Know your Tools, teaches how the Android application is capable of controlling connected devices. It begins with some onboard Arduino characteristics and then explains how to create the first Android application that is capable of communicating with the integrated Arduino device. It then shows how to create a fully functional circuit using a breadboard for fast prototyping.

Chapter 3, Testing your Physical Application, explains the main concept behind physical application testing. The first part shows how to build a circuit that is testable from a software application. It then shows how to implement a diagnostic mode to test whether the connected circuit is working correctly.

Chapter 4, Using Sensors to Listen to the Environment, begins by explaining how sensors work and how they can be used to make the prototype context aware. It then shows how to build a heartbeat monitor, coding an Arduino sketch to read the sensor's data, and an Android application to visualize the computed results.

Chapter 5, Managing Interactions with Physical Components, teaches how to manage user interactions. It starts by explaining some components that can be used to let the outside world interact with the system. It then shows how to build a web radio with a physical controller to manage the prototype volume and to change the current station. In the last part, an Android API is used to playback Internet radio streaming.

Chapter 6, Building a Chronotherm for Home Automation, explains how to use some UDOO capabilities for home automation. It shows the creation of a Chronotherm using a circuit to detect environment temperature, and an Android user interface to visualize sensor data and to change the desired temperatures for each time interval.

Chapter 7, Using Android APIs for Human Interaction, adds more functionality to the application from the previous chapter extending the settings management to store different presets using voice recognition and synthesis to manage users' interactions.

Chapter 8, Adding Network Capabilities, extends the Chronotherm application again with the capability to collect forecast data through a RESTful web service. In the last part, it shows how to use collected data to provide more functionalities to the Chronotherm.

Chapter 9, Monitoring your Devices with MQTT, teaches the main concepts of the Internet of Things and the MQTT protocol, used to exchange data between physical devices. It then shows how to set up a cloud-based MQTT broker, capable of receiving and dispatching the Chronotherm temperature updates. The last part shows how to write a standalone Android application to receive the sent data from the Chronotherm.

This a bonus chapter and is downloaded from the following link: https://www.packtpub.com/sites/default/files/downloads/1942OS_Chapter_9.pdf

In order to run the code demonstrated in this book, you need to configure the development environment, both for Android and Arduino, and a dual or a quad UDOO board with the Android operating system installed, as described in the Downloading and installing Android and Setting up the development environment section in Chapter 1, Turn On the Engines.

This book is for Android developers who want to apply their skills to build real-world devices capable of interacting with the surrounding environment and to communicate with Android applications. A basic knowledge of Android programming is required to start building real-world devices powered by Android. Prior knowledge of prototyping platforms or circuit building isn't required.

This book will teach you the basics of creating real-world devices through some electronic components that are regularly used during prototype building, and how to integrate them with the Android user interface.

In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text are shown as follows: "The play() method sets the streaming URL of the current active station and starts the async prepare."

A block of code is set as follows:

public class HelloWorld extends Activity {
  @Override
  protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
    setContentView(R.layout.activity_hello_world);
  }
}

When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:

public class HelloWorld extends Activity {
  @Override
  protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
    setContentView(R.layout.activity_hello_world);
  }
}

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "For the purpose of this HelloWorld application, select a Blank Activity and click Next."

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To send us general feedback, simply send an e-mail to <[email protected]>, and mention the book title via the subject of your message.

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