This book addresses two very important topics: "Programming" and "Programming with Android".
Programming nowadays is indeed more and more tied to interactions with physical space—you can no longer think about programming only pixels of a screen. Thanks to the evolution of mobile devices, application design and development has encountered a vision change. Today, accelerations and physical rotations of devices are managed by software; information changes depending on the geographic location and on common activities such as walking, driving, travelling, and so on. The next step is programming physical objects connected to the Internet, making our houses, cars, and clothes interactive. This book has the merit to introduce this new vision, showing how simple it is to program real objects, creating new smart ones this way. And it fulfils this goal with an UDOO board, Arduino and Android, starting with a simple Android application that lets you control sensor lights, temperature range, LED lights, and lots more.
UDOO, in fact, allows rapid prototyping of projects based on Arduino: the advantage is a tiny computer that is integrated to the Arduino microcontroller, running Android and Linux. The first few chapters highlight how to realize the connection between Android and Arduino, a very simple task due to the Android Accessory Development Kit (ADK) communication protocol, which is UDOO-compatible. The author, to further simplify the implementation of the protocol, introduces an external library, which allows you, with few lines of code, to connect Android to the real world.
After this first introductory part, you are pushed into the DIY philosophy: start getting your hands dirty, which is the most interesting part. There are several examples and no need for great tools. With just a wooden peg and a light sensor, you can build a heartbeat monitor with the added possibility of visualizing and managing data.
Going forward, in the book, you will see more complex projects, but you will also discover how simple it is to realize the interaction between software and the real world.
This is the fundamental aspect: opening up your imagination and giving new perspectives to software developers.
Maurizio Caporali
Product Manager and Cofounder of UDOO
