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)

To get the most out of this book

To get the most out of this book you'll need an Android Things Dev Kit and a Rainbow HAT because it will allow you to run all the examples in Chapter 2, The Rainbow HAT.

There are a lot of other hardware components that you don't require, but they are interesting to have just to see them working. I recommend that you acquire the ones you are interested in. We go into more detail about developer kits and how to pick the right one, as well as a summary of the other hardware, as part of Chapter 1, Introducing Android Things.

Download the example code files

You can download the example code files for this book from your account at www.packtpub.com. If you purchased this book elsewhere, you can visit www.packtpub.com/support and register to have the files emailed directly to you.

You can download the code files by following these steps:

  1. Log in or register at www.packtpub.com.
  2. Select the SUPPORT tab.
  3. Click on Code Downloads & Errata.
  4. Enter the name of the book in the Search box and follow the onscreen instructions.

Once the file is downloaded, please make sure that you unzip or extract the folder using the latest version of:

  • WinRAR/7-Zip for Windows
  • Zipeg/iZip/UnRarX for Mac
  • 7-Zip/PeaZip for Linux

The code bundle for the book is also hosted on GitHub at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Android-Things-Quick-Start-Guide. In case there's an update to the code, it will be updated on the existing GitHub repository.

We also have other code bundles from our rich catalog of books and videos available at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/. Check them out!

Download the color images

Code in action

Conventions used

There are a number of text conventions used throughout this book.

CodeInText: Indicates code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles. Here is an example: "There is also the concept of AutoCloseable, which is an interface that all the peripherals implement."

A block of code is set as follows:

dependencies {
[...]
implementation 'com.google.android.things.contrib:driver-rainbowhat:+'
}

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

class MainActivity : Activity() {

private lateinit var led: Gpio

override fun onCreate(savedInstanceState: Bundle?) {
super.onCreate(savedInstanceState)
setup()
while (true) {
loop()
}
}

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

$ sudo ./android-things-setup-utility-macos 

Bold: Indicates a new term, an important word, or words that you see onscreen. For example, words in menus or dialog boxes appear in the text like this. Here is an example: "We select Install Android Things."

Warnings or important notes appear like this.
Tips and tricks appear like this.