Book Image

Android Things Projects

By : Azzola
Book Image

Android Things Projects

By: 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 (9 chapters)

Things support library


Things support library is the new library developed by Google to handle the communication with peripherals and drivers. This is a completely new library not present in the Android SDK and this library is one of the most important features. It exposes a set of Java Interface and classes (APIs) that we can use to connect and exchange data with external devices such as sensors, actuators, and so on. This library hides the inner communication details, supporting several industry standard protocols such as:

  • GPIO
  • I2C
  • PWM
  • SPI
  • UART

During the book, we will discover how to use this library to connect to several devices.

Moreover, this library exposes a set of APIs to create and register new device drivers called user drivers. These drivers are custom components deployed with the Android Things app that extends the Android Things framework. In other words, they are custom libraries that enable an app to communicate with other device types not supported by Android Things natively.

This book will guide you, step by step, to learn how to build real-life projects using Android. You will explore the new Android Things APIs and how to use them. In the next sections, you will learn how to install Android Things on Raspberry Pi 3 and Intel Edison.