Android Things Developer Preview 3

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.