Getting Started with Android Things

I’ve been excited at the prospect of IoT and building with Android Things for a long time

During my winter vacation, visions of complex and exciting projects were swirling around in my head. Finally deciding the time was right, I started down the rabbit hole with a simple Google search “android things kit”.

This lead to questions such as

what board should I get?

would a developer kit be better?

how is Android Things actually installed?

how are buttons and sensors added?

I quickly discovered that I had a lot of questions to go along with the myriad of ideas running through my head, and I decided to refocus my initial expectations and choose a less daunting initial project.

Since I’m not very familiar with the hardware aspect of things, I chose to avoid that as much as possible during this first foray into Android Things.

Instead, I decided I would go from 0 to a typical phone/tablet “Hello World” built on an Android Things install.

Selecting the Hardware

One of the first challenges was learning about what hardware platforms were compatible with Android Things and which were easily available.

Finding out what the options are

Documentation for the various developer kits can be found on the Android developers website.

There’s a handy chart with several options including links for more information and where to buy

Where to buy

There are a couple good options to purchase your hardware depending on which platform you want to go with.

What I chose

After looking around a bit, and a recommendation from Rebecca Franks I decided to go with the PICO-PI-IMX7 kit.

Honestly the recommendation from Rebecca sold me on it, but I was also happy at the thought of having a kit with a screen, a camera AND the Rainbow Hat. You can find more about this kit here:

What I Ordered

Unfortunately, this kit was backordered when I was ready to order. Being the impatient consumer/developer that I am, I decided to roll the dice a bit and purchase my kit piecemeal.

So instead, I ordered the following, and ended up with just about everything that comes with the full kit (I’ll mention what was missing later).

Shipping was surprisingly fast and, after ordering, I waited less than a week to receive my kit.