Google’s newly-rechristened Internet of Things (IoT) effort, called Android Things, hits Developer Preview 2 this week.
As you may recall, Google announced Android Things back in December and released a first Developer Preview at that time. Previously codenamed “Project Brillo”, Android Things lets developers create always-updated smart devices using Android APIs and Google services.
Today, in keeping with its plan to update Android Things every 6-8 weeks, Google has announced a second Developer Preview release of this new platform.
“Android Things is a comprehensive solution to building Internet of Things (IoT) products with the power of Android,” Google’s Wayne Piekarski explains. “It includes familiar tools such as Android Studio, the Android Software Development Kit (SDK), Google Play Services, and Google Cloud Platform. Android Things supports a System-on-Module (SoM) architecture, where a core computing module can be initially used with development boards and then easily scaled to large production runs with custom designs, while continuing to use the same Board Support Package (BSP) from Google.”
Android Things Developer Preview 2 includes the following improvements and additions:
Improved support for USB audio. The Intel Edison and Raspberry Pi 3 now support USB audio. (This was available on NXP Pico previously.)
Peripheral I/O (PIO) improvements. Google says it has fixed many PIO bugs in this release.
Intel Joule support. This release is the first to support the Intel Joule platform, which Google says offers the most computing power in its IoT lineup to date.
Native I/O and user drivers. This release adds improved support for Android’s NDK capabilities, which lets developers used native languages like C or C++ instead of Java.
You can find out more from the Android Developers Blog.
Tagged with Android Things, Internet of Things, IoT
