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)

Usage on displays

We used an LCD display and an OLED screen in the I2C chapter. This time we will look at an LED matrix and the same OLED screen again, but wired to SPI so that you can see the differences:

Note that the Rainbow HAT does have SPI pins exposed. Be aware that early versions of the Rainbow HAT have these pins wrongly labeled (the wiring is consistent, just the label is incorrect). Double check the correct labels or just connect the peripherals directly to your developer board:

Incorrect and correct labeling of the SPI pins on the Rainbow HAT
Double-check the SPI pin labels on the Rainbow HAT, as early versions have the incorrect label.

LED matrix

This peripheral is an 8x8 LED matrix. It is great for retro-style...