In this chapter, we introduced the concept of long-lived threads for hardware interfacing. You constructed a circuit that connected the GPIO pushbutton switch, GPIO LED, FRAM device, and temperature and pressure sensors to the BBB. Unlike the example apps in the previous chapters, the example app in this chapter used polling to continually monitor the state of the hardware. You also explored using five additional methods of the AsyncTask class for communication and control between the background thread and the main UI thread of your app.

Now that you have learned many of the basic concepts of hardware interfacing with Android using an app, it is time to look at the bigger picture and see how to turn your prototyped solution into a more permanent solution.

In the next chapter, you will learn about integrating your solution with the Android framework, combining your solution with other capes available for the BBB, and other interfaces that you can use for your future interfacing projects...