Droidcon India

Building Consumer Electronics Product using Android Operating System.

Outline

Consumer Electronics field is very huge and includes lot of electronics products other than mobile and tablets. Current Android is used primary in mobile and tablet products. Although, one can use same framework for other applications too. I will try to discuss pros and cons of same too.

You wish to develop some car deck device or touch base device which requires GUI. Also, you wish to use some standard applications, such as PDF reader, Notification, Video Player etc too. You also want incorporate firmware update feature.

Case Study:

Let’s say, You wish to develop refrigerator with touch panel in front, having standard application such as notification, recipe book, video viewer to watch cooking show, streaming music or online radio etc. You would like to see temperature log and make application for making list of grocery items to be procured.

Currently people use one of the following : Embedded Linux , Win CE or some RTOS.

Now for using any of above OS, what developer needs to do is

• Find right tool-chain
• Build Kernel
• Build File system
• Cross compile standard lib(s)
• Start developing application or cross compile open src ones.
• Develop main advance application which is not available. (Say, temperature logger in above case)

With android you can avoid lot of above stuff, but still you need to do few things, which I will try to explain in session.

Notes:

• Focus is different than http://funnel.hasgeek.com/droidcon/67-android-porting-for-dummies and http://funnel.hasgeek.com/droidcon/109-extending-the-android-framework-with-new-devices

• if you have any comment / suggestion, you can write in comment section below or email me at viralsachde at gmail

Other related reference :

• Technical Report on ‘Using Android in Industrial Automation’ http://android.serverbox.ch/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/android_industrial_automation.pdf

• Demo of Android based Set Top Box http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2Ab1jGL4bo

• Examples of other devices Video game console, GPS Ski Goggles Display, Television, Cordless phone http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Android_devices#Other_devices

Requirements

Should know what is and role of :

• kernel
• operating system
• processor

Having understanding Android OS Architecture will be good advantage.

Speaker bio

Viral Sachde runs Consumer Electronics Product Design house called Citrus Cycloid Engineering Solution, more details at citruscycloid.com
He has more than 6 years of diverse experience in Consumer Electronics domain.