Android Things Quick Start Guide

By : Raul Portales

5 (1)

Buy this Book

Android Things Quick Start Guide

5 (1)

By: Raul Portales

Buy this Book

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.

Preface

Who this book is for

What this book covers

To get the most out of this book

Get in touch

Free Chapter

Introducing Android Things

Technical requirements

What is Android Things?

Design concepts behind Android Things

Hardware you will need

Setting up a developer kit

Creating an Android Things project

Summary

The Rainbow HAT

Technical requirements

Android Things architecture

LEDs

Buttons

Piezo buzzer

Alphanumeric display (Ht16k33)

Temperature and pressure sensor (Bmx280)

LED strip (Apa102)

Summary

GPIO - Digital Input/Output

Technical requirements

Making the code work on any developer kit

Using GPIO for output

Using GPIO for input

Other usages of GPIO

Summary

PWM - Buzzers, Servos, and Analog Output

Technical requirements

PWM overview

Piezo buzzers

Servos

PWM as analog output

Summary

I2C - Communicating with Other Circuits

Technical requirements

Overview of I2C

Revisiting Rainbow HAT components

Extension components

Small displays

Other I2C sensors

Summary

SPI - Faster Bidirectional Communication

Technical requirements

Overview of SPI

LED strip

Usage on displays

Summary

The Real Power of Android Things

Technical requirements

Using Android UI

Companion apps and communication

More cool stuff

Summary

Pinouts diagrams and libraries

Raspberry Pi Pinout

NXP iMX7D Pinout

Supported and unsupported libraries

Other Books You May Enjoy

Leave a review - let other readers know what you think

Customer Reviews

5 (1)

5 star

100%

4 star

3 star

2 star

1 star

Technical requirements

You will be required to have Android Studio and Android Things installed on a developer kit. You also will require many hardware components to effectively perform the tasks given in this chapter. The components are very interesting to have, just to see them working, but the Rainbow HAT is particularly important. We go into details about the developer kits and how to pick the right one, as a part of Chapter 1, Introducing Android Things. Finally, to use the Git repository of this book, you need to install Git.

The code files of this chapter can be found on GitHub:
https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Android-Things-Quick-Start-Guide.

Check out the following video to see the code in action:

http://bit.ly/2MGJ2bi .