Making Android Accessories with IOIO

Preface

Android phones are a great platform for developing apps, but sometimes it is nice if those apps go beyond the built-in hardware of the phone and connect to some homemade electronics.

The IOIO board allows you to do just that, and this book will show you how to use the IOIO board and interface it to various different electronic modules and components.

These techniques involved in using IOIO are illustrated in example projects. These projects are:

• An intruder alarm that uses your phone to send an SMS text message when movement is detected by its PIR sensor.

• A Bluetooth temperature logger that records temperatures onto the SD card of your phone.

• An 8x8 LED Matrix display that will display animations and is controlled by your phone.

• A Bluetooth rover that you can control from your Android phone.

What You Will Need

For all the projects, you will need an Android phone running Android 2.1 or later, and of course, an IOIO board.

Each project also requires some additional parts, and these are listed along with order codes for US and international component suppliers.

The projects are of various levels of difficulty and all require a little soldering, so you will also need a soldering iron.

How to Use this Book

You need to read Chapter 1 to get started, but then you can pick and choose from the remaining project chapters. All the code for the projects is available at http://www.ioiobook.com.

Conventions Used in This Book

The following typographical conventions are used in this book:

Italic

Indicates new terms, URLs, email addresses, filenames, and file extensions.

Constant width

Used for program listings, as well as within paragraphs to refer to program elements such as variable or function names, databases, data types, environment variables, statements, and keywords.

Constant width bold

Shows commands or other text that should be typed literally by the user.

Constant width italic

Shows text that should be replaced with user-supplied values or by values determined by context.

Caution

This icon indicates a warning or caution.

Using Code Examples

This book is here to help you get your job done. In general, you may use the code in this book in your programs and documentation. You do not need to contact us for permission unless you’re reproducing a significant portion of the code. For example, writing a program that uses several chunks of code from this book does not require permission. Selling or distributing a CD-ROM of examples from O’Reilly books does require permission. Answering a question by citing this book and quoting example code does not require permission. Incorporating a significant amount of example code from this book into your product’s documentation does require permission.

We appreciate, but do not require, attribution. An attribution usually includes the title, author, publisher, and ISBN. For example: “Making Android Accessories with IOIO by Simon Monk (O’Reilly). Copyright 2012 Simon Monk, 978-1-449-32328-8.”

If you feel your use of code examples falls outside fair use or the permission given above, feel free to contact us at [e-mail].

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Acknowledgments

I thank Linda for giving me the time, space, and support to write this book, and for putting up with the various messes my projects create around the house.

Thanks to Ytai Ben-Tsvi, the originator of IOIO, for doing such a good job on the platform and his most useful comments on the book during its writing.

Nathan and Aaron at Sparkfun kept me supplied in IOIOs, and I thank them for their help and encouragement.

Finally, I would like to thank Andy Oram, Mike Hendrickson, and everyone at O’Reilly who has had a hand in producing this book.