
Android Things – IoT Platform - christop
https://developer.android.com/things/
======
whiskers
We've been working with the Android Things team at Google to create a great
experience for getting started with Android Things on Raspberry Pi.

The end result is Rainbow HAT - a mixture of sensors, displays, sounds, and
inputs all on a single HAT: [https://shop.pimoroni.com/collections/new-
products/products/...](https://shop.pimoroni.com/collections/new-
products/products/rainbow-hat-for-android-things)

If you have any questions feel free to ask!

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mrpippy
Most interesting part: it has Java APIs for direct access to hardware over
GPIO, PWM, UART, SPI, I2C. The intention is that all device access happens
from application-level Java code, not at the kernel/HAL/framework level. This
means devices will get kernel/framework updates directly from Google, no OEM
in-between.

> Note: You cannot customize the behavior of device drivers in the Linux
> kernel or Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) to add new functionality to a
> device.

[https://developer.android.com/things/sdk/drivers/index.html](https://developer.android.com/things/sdk/drivers/index.html)

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askvictor
What will this mean for speed/timing? Some IO is very timing sensitive, so
much that python is too slow to handle it; I wonder if these abstractions will
cause any problems.

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pasbesoin
What's the Google "dogfooding" scenario.

Because, absent that, I'm not going to place any trust in longevity.

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joshbaptiste
Anyone know of a super cheap GSM network to utilize all these new IoT
contraptions?

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blacksmith_tb
Appropriately enough, if you have Project Fi service you can request up to 9
data-only SIMs[1] that are only charged for however much they are used.

1:
[https://support.google.com/fi/answer/6330195?hl=en](https://support.google.com/fi/answer/6330195?hl=en)

