Android Open Accessory Development Kit
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Google recently announced a new hardware push to go along it’s Android platform, namely the Android Open Accessory Development Kit. The first implementation is a slightly modified Arduino Mega matched with a shield, all this supported with a new API (software library) in the Android OS. It is far from being the first solution to hook up external hardware to an Android phone, but this combo is now officially developed and supported fully moving forward. It is great to see Google adopts Arduino at the hardware level. They comply with the full new Open Source Hardware (OSHW) initiative, which is quite nice. But on the other hand, it imposes a set of new approaches and protocols by the all mighty Google that depart from current hardware/software solutions and other people’s innovative works (like the IOIO). Nothing is never perfectly fine in this world, but this is a great step forward for physical computing and the expension of hardware tools/support in sync with (major) software development.
One thing I am happy to see is the CapSense library, meaning you have a capacitance sensor built right in (on the shield). I bought a CapSense board a few years ago, so it was a nice surprise to see this popping up again in the kit. Sweet. You can read all about the new kit + sdk on the developers site: http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/usb/adk.html
Make Magazine through its blog has published a nice writeup on the new kit.
