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

Android Things board compatibility


Android Things is a new operating system specifically built for IoT. At the time of writing, Android Things supported four different development boards:

  • Raspberry Pi 3 Model B
  • Intel Edison
  • NXP Pico i.MX6UL
  • Intel Joule 570x

In the near future, more boards will be added to the list. Google has already announced that it will support this new board NXP Argon i.MX6UL.

The book will focus on using the first two boards: Raspberry Pi 3 and Intel Edison. Anyway, you can develop and test all the book's projects on the other boards too. This is the power of Android Things: it abstracts the underlying hardware providing, a common way to interact with peripherals and devices. The paradigm that made Java famous, Write Once and Run Anywhere (WORA), applies to Android Things too. This is a winning feature of Android Things because we can develop an Android Things app without worrying about the underlying board. Anyway, when we develop an IoT app there are some minor aspects we should consider so that our app will be portable to other compatible boards.