Google has been working and experimenting with the Internet of Things (IoT) for several years now. In general terms, this technology lets smart devices to use sensors and actuators to communicate with each other across the internet.

In 2015, they launched the Project Brillo for this matter, but after getting some feedback from developers regarding the difficulties of working with different types of products, they decided to go for an OS with the same development tools as standard Android.

Android Things

They launched Android Things one year later then, easing the development process by enabling developers to create IoT applications just as they would create mobile apps.   

And Now, after a developer preview with more than 100,000 SDK downloads, getting more feedback from the community and the support of their partners to build some prototypes, Android Things 1.0 has come to the scene.   

This means that with the release of the long-term support version 1.0 of Android Things, developers now officially have the tools to build incredible projects with Android’s technology, including Android Studio, SDKs, APIs and other Google services like Firebase and Cloud platforms.

Android Things lets you build commercial products without having previous knowledge of embedded system design, and provides you the chance of maintaining IoT devices at scale.

Android Things version 1.0 solves development issues

As we´ve mentioned, working with IoT was not an easy task before, however, Google solved some of these issues by building an OS for developers. They now give solutions to the inconsistent development, the costly and slowly hardware prototyping, and the security concerns:

The power of Android

The experience of building smart devices can be very different from one device to another, making APIs not as consistent and reliable like we would expect.  

With Android Things, developers can easily focus on building their IoT products, just like they build for phones, saving up a lot of time and effort.

Scales from prototype to production

Google released a few System-on-Modules (SoMs) Kits, hardware platforms at low cost to help developers prototyping and testing their product ideas.

Now, Android Things gives you access to hardware references designs and lets you scale from prototype to production, as they have achieved agreements with vendors to get long-term support.

Automatic updates and security built-in

keeping updated all these devices is not easy or inexpensive, so Google will offer security features built into the platform, providing all the back-end infrastructure the to support stability fixes and security patches.   

Google will offer this for three years, for each long-term support version, giving you additional options for extend this support.

Conclusion

The official release of Android Things 1.0 provides a wide range of professional opportunities for developers. With the Android skills and knowledge that some already have, now they can create incredible projects based on IoT more easily, at low-cost and scale.

Now, we are expecting to see the amazing things developers will create with Android Things, the improvements Google will probably introduce in the following versions and, of course, the devices that Google have been developing with its partners like the Smart Speakers from LG and the Smart displays from Lenovo.