Today we're releasing Developer Preview seven (DP7) of Android Things, Google's platform that enables Android developers to exercise Internet of Things (IoT) devices. The platform also supports powerful applications such equally video as well as good processing as well as on-board automobile learning amongst TensorFlow.
The latest preview is based on Android 8.1 as well as is updated to back upward version 11.8.0 of Google Play Services. For all the details of what's included inwards DP7, run across the release notes. Here are some of the highlights:
Console enhancements as well as device updates
New features are also available inwards the Android Things Console to get upward production administration from image to production:
- Product Models. Create multiple software variations of the same hardware product, as well as cope the builds as well as updates for each independently.
- Product Sharing. Grant additional user accounts access to sentiment as well as cope the models, builds, as well as updates for a given product.
- Analytics. View metrics on device activations as well as update statistics for your products.
- Update Channels. Deploy software builds to groups of devices for evolution or beta testing, without disrupting production devices inwards the field.
Devices tin subscribe to unlike update channels using novel APIs added to UpdateManager. See the updated Device Updates API guide as well as console documentation to acquire to a greater extent than well-nigh configuring update channel subscriptions.
Addressing developer feedback
We've received tons of amazing feedback from developers as well as thence far, as well as focused heavily on addressing many of the peak reported issues inwards this release:
- Improved photographic tv set camera resolution support. Apps tin straight off capture icon information upward to the amount native resolution of the photographic tv set camera hardware.
- Support for MIDI. Use the MidiManager API to construct a virtual MIDI device inwards your app or interface amongst external MIDI controllers.
- Better testability of Android Things apps. The Peripheral I/O API straight off exposes interfaces instead of abstract classes, allowing local unit of measurement tests to supersede these objects amongst mocks as well as stubs to a greater extent than easily.
- Consistent API naming. This unloose renames many of the existing Android Things API classes to render a to a greater extent than consistent developer sense across the entire surface. See the updated API reference to review how bundle as well as flat names get got changed.
New Bluetooth APIs
Android mobile devices give away controls to users for pairing amongst as well as connecting to Bluetooth devices through the Settings app. IoT devices running Android Things demand to programmatically perform these same operations. The novel BluetoothConnectionManager API enables apps to get got command of the pairing as well as connector process. See the novel Bluetooth API guide for to a greater extent than details.
Sample updates
Last yr at Google I/O, nosotros demonstrated building an app using Kotlin on Android Things. For developers using Kotlin, nosotros get got started publishing Kotlin versions of the Android Things samples. Today you lot tin download the Button as well as LED sample inwards both Kotlin as well as Java, amongst to a greater extent than samples to follow really soon.
We get got also migrated the TensorFlow Image Classifier sample app to piece of job the TensorFlow Lite library, reducing the size of the pre-trained TensorFlow model yesteryear over 90% as well as the fourth dimension required to variety out the images yesteryear or as well as thence 50%.
Feedback
Please mail us your feedback yesteryear filing bug reports as well as feature requests, equally good equally asking whatsoever questions on Stack Overflow. You tin also bring together Google's IoT Developers Community on Google+, a dandy resources to acquire updates as well as hash out ideas. We await frontwards to seeing what you lot construct amongst Android Things!
