Flavours of Android

What Google Has to Offer

Architecture

Android vs Android Things

• Flexible access to hardware
• No system apps (such as Contacts, Calendar, Telephony, Settings ...)
• Only one app exposed to user: there can be background apps
• App started automatically
• Full-screen display: no status bar or navigation buttons
• Display is optional

LoWPAN Support

• Support for Thread protocol
  • Needs IEEE 15.4 radio
  • Direct device-to-device comms
  • IPv6 mesh networking
• APIs
  • Scan for and join a network
  • Create a new network
• Tools
  • OpenThread on nRF52840-PDK
  • CLI for dev and debugging: lowpanctl

Supported HW

• NXP i.MX7D (ARM Cortex A7, 32-bit)
• NXP i.MX6UL (ARM Cortex A7, 32-bit)
• Raspberry Pi 3 (ARM Cortex A53, 64-bit)

• Intel Edison (Intel Atom, 64-bit + Intel Quark, 32-bit)
• Intel Joule (Intel Atom, 64-bit)

NXP Pico i.MX7D Block Diagram

Hardware Specs

SoC NXP i.MX7D Block Diagram

Does my toaster need  quad-core-GHz processing

with 512 MB RAM and multitasking?

Potential Applications

1. Where image/video/audio are involved
2. Where local processing is needed, possibly with AI/ML

• Home appliances: washing machine, refrigerator, dishwasher ...
• Smart metering
• Point-of-Sale (POS) reader
• Vending machines
• Interactive ads
• Access control, camera monitoring, security systems
• Gateways, routers
• Asset tracking, predictive maintenance

CES 2018, Las Vegas, 9-12 Jan

Demo #1

1. Take picture

2. Store in DB

3. Send image to Vision API

4. Respond with labels

5. Store labels

Source: Doorbell code sample

Resources

• Android Studio command line (CL) tools: adb, apkanalyzer, dumpsys, logcat ...
• android-things-setup-utility:  CL tool to flash image
• Android Things Console: manage images and push updates to devices
• pio: access Peripheral I/O via adb shell (dev/debug)
• lowpanctl: access LoWPAN via adb shell (dev/debug)

• Android Things native library: access Peripheral I/O natively in C/C++
• Main site and docs
• Code samples
• Peripheral Driver Library
• Google's IoT Developers Community: on Google+
• hackster.io/google: get inspired by community projects