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android android-things Conferences

Highlights from Google Developer Days Europe 2017 – Kraków, Poland

This past week I was in Kraków for the Google Developer Days Europe Conference and the Google Developer Experts Summit. There was a lot to learn about new technology and I enjoyed meeting and spending time with many developers from across the globe. I didn’t know much about Kraków before visiting but I’m really thankful […]

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android android-things firebase

Electricity Monitoring App – Send Push Notifications using Firebase Cloud Functions

This week Firebase launched a new and VERY exciting feature called Firebase Cloud Functions. It makes Firebase even more powerful than before, by allowing you to trigger functions when certain events happen. Events can be any of the following things: Data changes on Firebase Realtime database nodes. Authentication Changes Analytics Changes Cloud Storage Changes and […]

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android-things

Android Things – Electricity Monitoring App

For those who may not know, I live in beautiful sunny South Africa (see my tweets for lots of awesome pictures). A few years ago we battled with a lack of electricity. While “load-shedding” is not so common these days, we have numerous unplanned outages. We even have a few of apps that give out schedules when the […]

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android android-things

Android Things – Building a Distributed Piano with Nearby Connections API

In the previous post, we had a short introduction to some hardware basics for the Software Engineer. We learnt about some different components and how to create a blinking LED with Android Things. In this blog post, we will learn to build a distributed piano with Android Things, a Piezo Speaker and Google’s Nearby API. I made a […]

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android android-things

Android Things – Hardware Basics for the Software Engineer

Android Things is the new kid on the block. It is Google’s embedded platform designed specifically for use with low-powered, IoT (Internet of Things) devices. The Android Things dev preview is available for a few different IoT boards, such as the Raspberry Pi 3, the Intel® Edison and the NXP Pico i.MX6UL.