Google's Android Open Accessory Development Kit
It was only a matter of time before the mighty Google put a toe in the open source hardware waters, and this finally came about yesterday with the release of the Android Open Accessory Development Kit.
The eagle-eyed may recognise that one part of the hardware bears more than a passing resemblance to an Arduino Mega 2560, and the other half of the kit looks not unlike an Arduino shield. Based on precisely this technology, the main board also integrates a USB host controller, thus enabling it to interface with an Android device and without immediately using up its I/O expansion capability. The other half of the ADK hardware being a shield which packs a healthy amount of I/O. Of course, this kit can also make use of a wealth of other Arduino shields.
On the software side it's simply a matter of dropping a few additional libraries into the Arduino development environment for programming the board, and adding the latest Google APIs to the Eclipse IDE for building the corresponding Android application.
In operation the ADK will check the capabilities of a connected Android device and setup communications when able to. The rest is down to whatever you develop for the ADK and for the connected Android device.
This makes perfect sense for Google. Their business is organising people's data, and anything they can do to drive data into and through their ever wider reaching platform helps them achieve this goal. Furthermore, it perfectly complements their Android@Home framework. Google will be in your house, orchestrating your home environment.
It's great to see that at launch Google not only provided the software part of the development kit but all the hardware design files too. Furnished via a Creative Commons license, you can pretty much do as you please with the schematics and PCB layouts etc, provided that you give attribution and you give others the same rights in relation to any derivatives.
The only downside is the reasonably expensive price tag of circa £240. This might not sound like a huge amount, but to anyone familiar with Arduino technology and its price point this is a big deal. However, it's unlikely to be an issue for very long and the only question is whether it takes weeks or months for someone to create a much cheaper clone. Which, given that the schematics, Gerbers, silkscreen, drill and pick and place etc files are all provided, shouldn't be too difficult a task. Will Google care? It's what they want!
Andrew Back
Well, it didn't take long for someone to come up with an ADK for close to a fifth the price:
http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/seeeduino-adk-main-board-p-846.html
I expect to see more clones and derivatives that are compatible with, and extend, the original Google ADK.
LStacey
I suspect that was part of the plan.
Andrew Back
I'm guessing all those silkscreen colours for the Google logo adds something to the cost, but not that much. As I say, I suspect that Google know full well that people will clone the ADK hardware and thus don't particularly care about the launch price. As such they may have just gone with almost the first manufacturer they spoke with. Or perhaps even got them to do the work to integrate USB host and design the shield for free, and in return let them charge a relatively high price knowing that the boards will be cloned in due course. The manufacturer would very likely recover their costs and more back before the market is flooded - many early adopters will be eager to cough up the asking price.
pdp7
I'm really confused by the high price I've seen reported here and elsewhere. It seems crazily high for basically a MEGA and an I/O shield. USB host controller isn't that expensive is it?
Maybe google just doesn't want to sell in volume and doesn't care. The upside to being open is that I assume an existing DIY company will make an economical version (SparkFun, Adafruit, etc).
Cheers,
Drew
http://twitter.com/pdp7
LStacey
My guess is that it's expensive due to being a very small production run. Hopefully the price will come down.