Android Developers Blog: Internet of Things

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Android Things Developer Preview 4

16 May 2017

Posted by Wayne Piekarski, Developer Advocate for IoT

Today, we are releasing the next Developer Preview 4 (DP4) of Android Things, bringing new supported hardware, features, and bug fixes to the platform. The goal of Android Things is to enable Android Developers to quickly build smart devices, and seamlessly scale from prototype to production using a Board Support Package (BSP) provided by Google.

AIY Projects and Google Assistant SDK

New hardware and driver support

NXP i.MX7D System on Module

Production hardware sample

Edison Candle sample with source and schematics

Thank you to all the developers who submitted feedback for the previous developer previews. Please continue sending us your feedback by filing bug reports and feature requests, and asking any questions on stackoverflow. To download images for DP4, visit the Android Things download page and find the changes in the release notes. You can also join Google's IoT Developers Community on Google+, a great resource to get updates and discuss ideas, with over 4,900 members. We also have a number of great talks about Android Things and IoT at Google I/O, which you can view via live stream or as a recording later.

Google

Android Things Developer Preview 3

06 April 2017

Posted by Wayne Piekarski, Developer Advocate for IoT

Today, we are releasing the Developer Preview 3 (DP3) of Android Things, bringing new features and bug fixes to the platform. This preview is part of our commitment to provide regular updates to developers who are building Internet of Things (IoT) products with our platform. Android developers can quickly build smart devices using Android APIs and Google services, while staying secure with updates directly from Google. The System-on-Module (SoM) architecture supports prototyping with development boards, and then scaling them to large production runs while using the same Board Support Package (BSP) from Google.

Android Bluetooth APIs

DP3 now includes support for all Android Bluetooth APIs in android.bluetooth and android.bluetooth.le, across all Android Things supported hardware. You can now write code that interacts with both Bluetooth classic and low energy (LE) devices just like a regular Android phone. Existing samples such as Bluetooth LE advertisements and scanning and Bluetooth LE GATT can be used unmodified on Android Things. We have also provided two new samples, Bluetooth LE GATT server and Bluetooth audio sink.

USB Host support

Android version 3.1 and later supports USB Host, which allows a regular user space application to communicate with USB devices without root privileges or support needed from the Linux kernel. This functionality is now supported in Android Things, to enable interfacing with custom USB devices. Any existing code supporting USB Host will work on Android Things, and an extra sample USB Enumerator is available that demonstrates how to iterate over and print the interfaces and endpoints for each USB device.

Feedback

Once again, thank you to all the developers who submitted feedback for the previous developer previews. Please continue to send us your feedback by filing bug reports and feature requests, and ask any questions on stackoverflow. To download images for Developer Preview 3, visit the Android Things download page, and find the changes in the release notes. You can also join Google's IoT Developers Community on Google+, a great resource to keep up to date and discuss ideas, with over 4100 new members.