IoT-based Android Things Developer Preview 2 released

In December, Google first announced Android Things, its new attempt to create a better Internet of Things (IoT) operating system. Today, the company has released the second developer preview of Android Things, with a number of new additions and bug fixes.

Developer Preview 2 now includes support for the Intel Joule hardware platform, which Google says offers “the most computing power in our lineup to date” for Android Things-based devices. USB Audio support to the Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) has been included for the Intel Edison and Raspberry Pi 3 boards with this new release. Developers who use native C or C++ code for their IoT products can now continue to use it with Android Things, thanks to the newly added native access to the Peripheral API (PIO).

Google has also created sample code for the OS that shows developers how to use the TensorFlow machine learning software library on Android Things devices.  It includes demos that can access a camera on such a board so it can use  its object recognition and image classification features. The new support also adds a way speak out the results using text-to-speech (TTS) features.

Android Things seems to be shaping up rather well for IoT devices, along with anyone who is making side products that can use the OS. Google says it will be providing new Developer Preview builds with additional features and bug fixes every eight weeks or so, but the company has not yet offered a timeline for when it plans to release the final version.

Are you currently using Android Things on your IoT board, and if so what has your experience been like so far? Please let us know your hands-on impressions in the comments!