
1Sheeld: Replace your Arduino shields with your smart phone - hsnim
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/integreight/1sheeld-replace-your-arduino-shields-with-your-sma
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moron4hire
What ever happened to the Android Accessory Development Kit? Wasn't this what
ADK was supposed to be? Like, 2 years ago?

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mik3y
My best guess is that it was something of a gimmick for Google I/O. They never
seemed well-supported by Google.

An alternative to ADK is the Android USB Host driver support. It's like
libusb: for phones with the right USB controller, you can write little drivers
in Java/userspace.

Here's an Android library you can use to talk to almost any Arduino, great for
these type of "make my microcontroller smarter" applications:
[https://github.com/mik3y/usb-serial-for-
android](https://github.com/mik3y/usb-serial-for-android) (full disclosure:
I'm the author)

~~~
follower
> My best guess is that it was something of a gimmick for Google I/O. They
> never seemed well-supported by Google.

I would agree. I created the Handbag for Android project
([http://handbagdevices.com/](http://handbagdevices.com/)) which was initially
based on the ADK so I've spent a lot of time with it. In the ADK 2.0 release
Google itself even moved away from having the physical USB link in favour of
using Bluetooth.

When 2.0 was released I started converting Handbag to have the option of
Bluetooth/WiFi/USB but the ADK stuff was so unreliable (and the debugging was
ridiculous due to different issues on each Android version available at the
time (2.x/3.x/4.x)) that it seemed like a waste of time to continue.

The goal of Handbag was to enable an Arduino sketch to create an Android UI
and have bi-directional communication between the two devices. It could be
interesting to adapt that aspect to run with the linked project.

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menemragab
Just Backed this up, and i had a chance to talk to their team and they are
super nice, intelligent hardware makers in Egypt, if not the best.the kit uses
the hardware components in your mobile device as if its embedded inside, and
communicated with your device over a secured bluetooth channel.

~~~
thedangler
What about WiFi?

~~~
menemragab
I think they have plans for that after they have fully pledged their
KickStarter.

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benbojangles
Why can't you just buy a HC-06 bluetooth adapter for £3 from ebay, then use
Amarino or a similar android apk?

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hershel
The sheeld looks less complex,you can more easily shift between using a phone
and normal shields, and the app contains more elements.

~~~
benbojangles
I see what you did there. Good work.

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hershel
there are some chinese android phones going at $35. they should fit quite
nicely with this project for permanent projects.

in the longer term, there are already microcontrollers that contains Bluetooth
who run arduino, so I believe this project will become only software.

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tehwalrus
When mine arrives, I'll actually have a reason to play with my Arduino again!
:)

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me2resh
I was going to buy multiple shields for my Quadcopter project, but now I can
save many of them.

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AliDarwish
Super Idea!!!

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JonSkeptic
What will they think of next?

If only there was some way to take advantage of all those hardware
capabilities on the phone without the hassle of hooking up an Arduino. If only
there was some sort of way to write 'programs' that take advantage of that
hardware. But 'programs' sounds boring, we'll call them 'applications'. Wait,
no...that has too many letters. I know! We'll call them 'apps'! You're gonna
love 'em, they're the next big thing.

~~~
spion
You're right. We don't need the Arduino, we can simply use our phone directly
to control that RC car, open doors with passcodes and read the temperature of
things.

Oh wait, a smartphone's hardware is closed, you get what you get (in terms of
sensors and control) and thats it.

Hmm. It would be nice if we could extend the smartphone's hardware
capabilities...

~~~
zokier
> Hmm. It would be nice if we could extend the smartphone's hardware
> capabilities...

on a more serious note, I'd love to see more widespread generic HW and SW
agnostic GPIO/DAQ standard. HW agnostic meaning that you could make your own
boards with whatever MCU you prefer, and interface it with whatever. SW
agnostic so that it would work with Windows, Linux, Android, OSX, iOS etc
painlessly.

~~~
moron4hire
I don't think there is any reason the current crop of consumer-grade MCUs
couldn't do that. An adapter cable for the differing pin layouts (you're never
going to get everyone to agree to the same footprint). On the PC side, they
are almost all running the FTDI chip, with a driver that simulates the device
as an RS232 serial port. So at that point it's really just making sure the
data is standardized.

Hell, most of the devices have support for inter-platform RS232. You should be
able to communicate between an Arduino and an MSP430 via RS232 (you might need
some resistors in the middle, because I think one runs 1.7v hotter than the
other).

The hardware situation is fragmented because I think people want the one-
device-one-shield model. I don't think they want to deal with daughter boards
dangling from adapter cables. The majority of users for these systems are
either hardware novices or hardware-and-software novices. Most of the
electrical engineers I know steer a wide birth away from them. And once they
get invested in a platform like Arduino, jumping over to something like TI
MSP430 is an effort that is at least as significant of an effort from where
they started, while providing only a limited, non-obvious benefit (in that
MSP430s are cheeeeaaaap).

