Android Things at DroidconUK 2017

This year at DroidconUK 2017, there were a vast array of booths to visit and check out, which included the Android Things booth! For those unfamiliar with Android Things, it’s Google’s Internet of Things platform, a consumer extension of what Brillo was. Internet of Things (IoT) refers to regular devices given internet connectivity and computational abilities. Over at the booth, they had set up a device which scans your face from its camera and prints the facial features made entirely out of black, spaced lines. Not only that, we interviewed the Android Things representatives at Droidcon, which you can check out down below on the XDA-Developers YouTube channel!

Android Things is just a new extension of Android for the platform to expand to new devices with new form factors, like Android TV or Android Auto. With it comes the usual stuff you can expect from Android, including debugging commands and Android application support – along with some nice sample applications on GitHub. The focus is more about developers building their own devices, however, we learn that dev kits can also be bought by developers who wish to prototype their software before eventually taking that concept and turning it into a product.

They also ran a workshop at this year’s Droidcon2gether Hackathon! They taught the basics of interacting with an Android Things IoT device, providing one for all registered attendees to the workshop for free. Attendees quickly got to work.

Armed with Android Studio, a factory image flashable via fastboot, and the knowledge of the excellent presenters, the people quickly learned how to program their Android Things device to interact with the world around it. Attendees learned a lot about the devices they were given, and by the end of the two-day workshop were considered to be somewhat proficient with programming for Android Things devices. You can purchase a similar device to what was given out here if you’re interested in programming one yourself! You can check out our recaps of this year’s Droidcon UK of day one and day two as well!

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