Google wants to put Android in the next wave of smart devices that’ll be vying to fill up your home. It’s launching a version of Android today called Android Things that can run on products like connected speakers, security cameras, and routers. The OS is supposed to make it easier for companies to start shipping hardware, since they’ll be able to work with the Android dev tools they already know.
Android Things is a new name, but the operating system itself isn’t strictly new. It’s basically an update and a rebranding to Brillo, an Android-based OS for smart devices and Internet of Things products announced a little more than a year and a half ago. Brillo has – publicly, at least – gone close to nowhere. It was more or less a no-show at CES last year, and there’s been little mention of it since.
Insert some quip about Google and naming here.
IoT is already insecure enough without Google putting updates in the hands of device manufacturers yet again. no thanks.
https://developer.android.com/things/hardware/index.html : “The Board Support Package (BSP) is managed by Google. This gives you a trusted platform to develop on with standard updates and fixes from Google.”
Edited 2016-12-15 10:17 UTC
I hate these generic names. It is too difficult to find relevant results when googling for them. You would think that Google would know that…
Isn’t Android basically just Linux kernel + bloated userland?
Most of the IoT things already use some sort of Linux embedded system, or some microkernel. This just sounds like Android trying to be more like Linux (as in “You can install it on your toaster!) which is actually I think more what Tizen is/should be aiming for.
Brillo was Android C and C++ userland, and they had planned to have C++ frameworks to mimic the Java ones in Android.
Apparently, that wasn’t what developers wanted.
Tizen is dead, Samsung killed it several times, just FOSS fans seem to think otherwise.
– They inherited MeeGo and made it into Tizen
– Replaced Tizen SDK with the Bada OS SDK, a C++ fork similar to Symbian C++
– Replaced the APIs inherited by Bada OS SDK with a framework done in C and Enlightenment that angered the C++ developers
– Now apparently they have decided to revamp it again and use .NET instead
Additionally they keep touting their HTML5 interface, as if it wasn’t already more than proven that no one likes them (Nokia WebWidgets, Palm OS, Blackberry, FireOS, ….)
Now they are even paying for anyone to write apps for Tizen, we all know how it worked for Microsoft and Blackberry:
http://incentive.tizenstore.com/
No one in his/her perfect mind would spend a dollar/euro/yuan/… of his/her development budget in such platform.
Shines your aluminum IoT devices fast!
https://www.google.nl/search?q=brillo&safe=off&client=ubuntu&hs=qXz&…
*Sorry* Just couldn’t resist 😀