An Update on Android Things

Posted by Dave Smith, Developer Advocate for IoT

Over the past year, Google has worked closely with partners to create consumer products powered by Android Things with the Google Assistant built-in. Given the successes we have seen with our partners in smart speakers and smart displays, we are refocusing Android Things as a platform for OEM partners to build devices in those categories moving forward. Therefore, support for production System on Modules (SoMs) based on NXP, Qualcomm, and MediaTek hardware will not be made available through the public developer platform at this time.

Android Things continues to be a platform for experimenting with and building smart, connected devices using the Android Things SDK on top of popular hardware like the NXP i.MX7D and Raspberry Pi 3B. System images for these boards will remain available through the Android Things console where developers can create new builds and push app updates for up to 100 devices for non-commercial use.

We remain dedicated to providing a managed platform for IoT devices, including turnkey hardware solutions. For developers looking to commercialize IoT products in 2019, check out Cloud IoT Core for secure device connectivity at scale and the upcoming Cloud IoT Edge runtime for a suite of managed edge computing services. For on-device machine learning applications, stay tuned for more details about our Edge TPU development boards.

All the (Android) Things at Google I/O

Melissa Daniels, Program Manager for Android Things

Android Things enables you to build and maintain IoT devices at scale. We recently released Android Things 1.0 with long-term support for production devices, so you can easily take an IoT device from prototype to commercial product.

We packed Google I/O this year with Android Things content to inspire and empower the developer community, from talks and codelabs to interactive demos and a scavenger hunt. Here's a closer look at the fun stuff we had on display that you won't see on the shelves of retail stores.

Demos

We introduced a handful of new interactive Android Things demos across I/O, showcasing the AI and ML capabilities of the platform, so if you didn't get an opportunity to attend this year, here's a few of our favorites-- perfect for exploring from wherever you are in the world!

Smart Flowers: Flos Mobilis

What do you get when you combine machine learning, Android Things and robotics? Flos Mobilis, a continuum robot where each flower is backed by an i.MX7D development board and a camera to run an embedded neural net model that controls the motion of the flower. This is all done offline with no data stored or transmitted.

Smart Flowers: Flos Affectus

What if a robot could respond to the way you feel? Flos Affectus is a cluster of robotic flowers that "bloom" and "un-bloom" depending on the expression detected on the user's face. The 4 broad expressions Flos Affectus is trained to detect are: happy, sad, angry, surprised. Using a camera embedded in the head of the alpha flower, the flower cluster is able to detect the user's face and infer the facial emotion. The flower cluster runs offline with no data stored or transmitted and demonstrates movement capabilities and on-device machine learning models.

Rosie the Android

Initially designed by a team of Google engineers for the annual Grace Hopper conference, Rosie the Android is a 5 foot selfie-taking Android, complete with machine-learning capabilities. Inspired by Rosie the Riveter, she's a fully controllable robot that can take photos, respond to commands, wheel around and interact with those around her.

Did you take a selfie with Rosie at I/O? Redeem your unique access code at g.co/rosie

Smart Projector

Smart Projector is built on Lantern, an Android Things project exploring the relationship between surfaces and content — augmenting real-world objects and environments with glanceable, meaningful data. It leverages the Google Experiments project known as Quick Draw, using the world's largest doodling data set that has been shared publicly to help with machine learning research.

To learn more about Lantern or to start building your own, start here.

3D Printer

This modified Printrbot Smalls 3D Printer uses a real-time subsystem that showcases the flexibility of Android Things-- a microcontroller does the low-latency motor control, while Android Things handles OpenGL rendering. By keeping most of the logic on a high-level platform like Android you make development and debugging much easier, thanks to Android's great tooling.

The future of 3D printing? Making real-time control as easy and portable as the rest of Android Things.

Codelabs

Phew! That was just the tip of the demo iceberg. With so many demos and so many ways to use Android Things, it's easy to start imagining all the things you can build! At I/O, we helped a lot of developers get started building their first Android Things device using the Android Things Starter Kit. We're making these codelabs available, so you can get to them whenever you need, or build your own.

Videos

Missed the I/O talks? Catch the recordings of each Android Things talk, so you can start, pause, and rewind at your own leisure. Or, just lean back and watch them all.

What's new in Android Things

Build effective OEM-level apps on Android Things

Build real consumer devices with Android Things

Electronic design for Android Things System on Modules

Women Techmakers panel: experiences developing on Android Things

Product design: how to build better products with Android Things

Device provisioning and authentication with Android Things

Update production devices in the field with the Android Things Console

Start building!

On top of all the resources we just mentioned, we have a corpus of information on our developer documentation, and our new community website where you can see more inspiring projects and even submit your own. So, what are you waiting for? Pick up an Android Things Starter Kit and start building something today!

Say Hello to Android Things 1.0

Posted by Dave Smith, Developer Advocate for IoT

Android Things is Google's managed OS that enables you to build and maintain Internet of Things devices at scale. We provide a robust platform that does the heavy lifting with certified hardware, rich developer APIs, and secure managed software updates using Google's back-end infrastructure, so you can focus on building your product.

After a developer preview with over 100,000 SDK downloads, we're releasing Android Things 1.0 to developers today with long-term support for production devices. Developer feedback and engagement has been critical in our journey towards 1.0, and we are grateful to the over 10,000 developers who have provided us feedback through the issue tracker, at workshop events, and through our Google+ community.

Powerful production hardware

Today, we are announcing support for new System-on-Modules (SoMs) based on the NXP i.MX8M, Qualcomm SDA212, Qualcomm SDA624, and MediaTek MT8516 hardware platforms. These modules are certified for production use with guaranteed long-term support for three years, making it easier to bring prototypes to market. Development hardware and reference designs for these SoMs will be available in the coming months.

New SoMs from NXP, Qualcomm, and MediaTek

The Raspberry Pi 3 Model B and NXP i.MX7D devices will continue to be supported as developer hardware for you to prototype and test your product ideas. Support for the NXP i.MX6UL devices will not continue. See the updated supported platforms page for more details on the differences between production and prototype hardware.

Secure software updates

One of the core tenets of Android Things is powering devices that remain secure over time. Providing timely software updates over-the-air (OTA) is a fundamental part of that. Stability fixes and security patches are supported on production hardware platforms, and automatic updates are enabled for all devices by default. For each long-term support version, Google will offer free stability fixes and security patches for three years, with additional options for extended support. Even after the official support window ends, you will still be able to continue to push app updates to your devices. See the program policies for more details on software update support.

Use of the Android Things Console for software updates is limited to 100 active devices for non-commercial use. Developers who intend to ship a commercial product running Android Things must sign a distribution agreement with Google to remove the device limit. Review the updated terms in the Android Things SDK License Agreement and Console Terms of Service.

Hardware configuration

The Android Things Console includes a new interface to configure hardware peripherals, enabling build-time control of the Peripheral I/O connections available and device properties such as GPIO resistors and I2C bus speed. This feature will continue to be expanded in future releases to encompass more peripheral hardware configurations.

Production ready

Over the past several months, we've worked closely with partners to bring products built on Android Things to market. These include Smart Speakers from LG and iHome and Smart Displays from Lenovo, LG, and JBL, which showcase powerful capabilities like Google Assistant and Google Cast. These products are hitting shelves between now and the end of summer.

Startups and agencies are also using Android Things to prototype innovative ideas for a diverse set of use-cases. Here are some examples we are really excited about:

• Byteflies: Docking station that securely transmits wearable health data to the cloud
  
• Mirego: Network of large photo displays driven by public photo booths in downtown Montreal

If you're building a new product powered by Android Things, we want to work with you too! We are introducing a special limited program to partner with the Android Things team for technical guidance and support building your product. Space is limited and we can't accept everyone. If your company is interested in learning more, please let us know here.

Additional resources

Take a look at the full release notes for Android Things 1.0, and head over to the Android Things Console to begin validating your devices for production with the 1.0 system image. Visit the developer site to learn more about the platform and explore androidthings.withgoogle.com to get started with kits, sample code, and community projects. Finally, join Google's IoT Developers Community on Google+ to let us know what you're building with Android Things!

Android Things Release Candidate

Posted by Dave Smith, Developer Advocate for IoT

Earlier this year at CES, we showcased consumer products powered by Android Things from partners like Lenovo, LG, JBL, iHome, and Sony. We are excited to see Android Things enable the wider developer ecosystem as well. Today we are announcing the final preview release of Android Things, Developer Preview 8, before the upcoming stable release.

Feature complete SDK

Developer Preview 8 represents the final API surface exposed in the Android Things support library for the upcoming stable release. There will be no more breaking API changes before the stable v1.0 release of the SDK. For details on all the API changes included in DP8, see the release notes. Refer to the updated SDK reference to review the classes and methods in the final SDK.

This release also brings new features in the Android Things developer console to make building and managing production devices easier. Here are some notable updates:

Production-focused console enhancements

With an eye towards building and shipping production devices with the upcoming LTS release, we have made several updates to the Android Things developer console:

• Enhanced OTA: Unpublish the current OTA build when issues are discovered in the field.
  
• Visual storage layout: Configure the device storage allocated to apps and data for each build, and get an overview of how much storage your apps require.
  
• Font/locale controls: Configure the set of supported fonts and locales packaged into each build.
  
• Group sharing: Product sharing has been extended to include support for Google Groups.

App library

The new app library enables you to manage APKs more easily without the need to package them together in a separate zipped bundle. Track individual versions, review permissions, and share your apps with other console users. See the app library documentation for more details.

Permissions

On mobile devices, apps request permissions at runtime and the end user grants them. In earlier previews, Android Things granted these same permissions automatically to apps on device boot. Beginning in DP8, these permissions are granted using a new interface in the developer console, giving developers more control of the permissions used by the apps on their device.

This change does not affect development, as Android Studio grants all permissions by default. Developers using the command line can append the -g flag to the adb install command to get the same behavior. To test how apps on your device behave with certain permissions revoked, use the pm command:

$ adb shell pm [grant|revoke] <permission-name> ...

App launch behavior

Embedded devices need to launch their primary application automatically after the device boots, and relaunch it if the app terminates unexpectedly. In earlier previews, the main app on the device could listen for a custom IOT_LAUNCHER intent to enable this behavior. Beginning in DP8, this category is replaced by the standard CATEGORY_HOME intent.

<activity android:name=".HomeActivity">
    ...

    <!-- Launch activity automatically on boot, relaunch on termination. -->
    <intent-filter>
        <action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN"/>
        <category android:name="android.intent.category.HOME"/>
        <category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT"/>
    </intent-filter>
</activity>

Apps that contain an IOT_LAUNCHER intent filter will no longer be triggered on boot. Update your apps to use CATEGORY_HOME instead.

Feedback

Thanks to all of you in the developer community for sharing your feedback with us throughout developer preview. Join Google's IoT Developers Community on Google+ to let us know what you're building with Android Things and how we can improve the platform in future releases to help you build connected devices at scale!

Android Things Developer Preview 7

Posted by Dave Smith, Developer Advocate for IoT

Today we're releasing Developer Preview 7 (DP7) of Android Things, Google's platform that enables Android developers to create Internet of Things (IoT) devices. The platform also supports powerful applications such as video and audio processing and on-board machine learning with TensorFlow.

The latest preview is based on Android 8.1 and is updated to support version 11.8.0 of Google Play Services. For all the details of what's included in DP7, see the release notes. Here are some of the highlights:

Console enhancements and device updates

New features are also available in the Android Things Console to enhance product management from prototype to production:

• Product Models. Create multiple software variations of the same hardware product, and manage the builds and updates for each independently.
  
• Product Sharing. Grant additional user accounts access to view and manage the models, builds, and updates for a given product.
  
• Analytics. View metrics on device activations and update statistics for your products.
  
• Update Channels. Deploy software builds to groups of devices for development or beta testing, without disrupting production devices in the field.

Devices can subscribe to different update channels using new APIs added to UpdateManager. See the updated Device Updates API guide and console documentation to learn more about configuring update channel subscriptions.

Addressing developer feedback

We've received tons of amazing feedback from developers so far, and focused heavily on addressing many of the top reported issues in this release:

• Improved camera resolution support. Apps can now capture image data up to the full native resolution of the camera hardware.
  
• Support for MIDI. Use the MidiManager API to build a virtual MIDI device in your app or interface with external MIDI controllers.
  
• Better testability of Android Things apps. The Peripheral I/O API now exposes interfaces instead of abstract classes, allowing local unit tests to replace these objects with mocks and stubs more easily.
  
• Consistent API naming. This release renames many of the existing Android Things API classes to provide a more consistent developer experience across the entire surface. See the updated API reference to review how package and class names have changed.

New Bluetooth APIs

Android mobile devices expose controls to users for pairing with and connecting to Bluetooth devices through the Settings app. IoT devices running Android Things need to programmatically perform these same operations. The new BluetoothConnectionManager API enables apps to take control of the pairing and connection process. See the new Bluetooth API guide for more details.

Sample updates

Last year at Google I/O, we demonstrated building an app using Kotlin on Android Things. For developers using Kotlin, we have started publishing Kotlin versions of the Android Things samples. Today you can download the Button and LED sample in both Kotlin and Java, with more samples to follow very soon.

We have also migrated the TensorFlow Image Classifier sample app to use the TensorFlow Lite library, reducing the size of the pre-trained TensorFlow model by over 90% and the time required to classify the images by approximately 50%.

Feedback

Please send us your feedback by filing bug reports and feature requests, as well as asking any questions on Stack Overflow. You can also join Google's IoT Developers Community on Google+, a great resource to get updates and discuss ideas. We look forward to seeing what you build with Android Things!

IoT Developer Story: Deeplocal

Posted by Dave Smith, Developer Advocate for IoT

Deeplocal is a Pittsburgh-based innovation studio that makes inventions as marketing to help the world's most loved brands tell their stories. The team at Deeplocal built several fun and engaging robotics projects using Android Things. Leveraging the developer ecosystem surrounding the Android platform and the compute power of Android Things hardware, they were able to quickly and easily create robots powered by computer vision and machine learning.

DrawBot

DrawBot is a DIY drawing robot that transforms your selfies into physical works of art.

"The Android Things platform helped us move quickly from an idea, to prototype, to final product. Switching from phone apps to embedded code was easy in Android Studio, and we were able to pull in OpenCV modules, motor drivers, and other libraries as needed. The final version of our prototype was created two weeks after unboxing our first Android Things developer kit."

- Brian Bourgeois, Producer, Deeplocal

Want to build your own DrawBot? See the Hackster.io project for all the source code, schematics, and 3D models.

HandBot

A robotic hand that learns and reacts to hand gestures, HandBot visually recognizes gestures and applies machine learning.

"The Android Things platform made integration work for Handbot a breeze. Using TensorFlow, we were able to train a neural network to recognize hand gestures. Once this was created, we were able to use Android Things drivers to implement games in easy-to-read Android code. In a matter of weeks, we went from a fresh developer kit to competing against a robot hand in Rock, Paper, Scissors."

- Mike Derrick, Software Engineer, Deeplocal

Want to build your own HandBot? See the Hackster.io project for all the source code, schematics, and 3D models.

Visit the Google Hackster community to explore more inspiring ideas just like these, and join Google's IoT Developers Community on Google+ to get the latest platform updates, ask questions, and discuss ideas.