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

How to implement a custom sensor driver


Now that we know how I2C protocol works, we can start developing our custom driver. A powerful feature of Android Things is the capability to add new peripherals developing specific drivers. In other words, it is possible to extend the sensor framework including new sensors. In this way, Android Things does not make a difference between a built-in sensor and the new sensors. It is possible to handle them in the same way we handle built-in sensors. It is important to notice that the driver that handles the sensor depends on the sensor protocol built on top of I2C bus.

In order to implement a new sensor driver in Android Things we have to follow these steps:

  1. Implement a class that extends the UserSensorDriver.
  2. Describe the sensor specifications and capabilities.
  3. Register the sensor driver.

To better understand how these classes are used and the role they play, it is useful to analyze how the BMP280/BME280 sensor driver is implemented. This can help us to...