[Noisebridge-discuss] Android/arduino questions

[rachel lyra hospodar]

thanks for the answers!  your reward is... more questions!

my understanding of the ADK package so far is this:

a fancy arduino that comes with a bunch of sensor bells and whistles all
attached, as well as additional chips (such as an FTDI) that give it
more flexibility.
also adk is a software tool that runs on the phone to receive and
interpret the signals.

correct so far?

it looks like the arduino in the kit is designed to only connect to the
phone with a usb cable, i have been assuming that it would be possible
to somehow replace that cable with wireless radios.  i have done some
work using xbee and hope rf, and haven't dabbled in bluetooth yet BUT
just found out about a way to get into it without spending an arm and a
leg so i plan to start trying it out.  i am guessing there might be some
differences to using the adk arduino and a bluetooth to talk bluetooth
to the phone itself, vs attaching an external (maybe xbee) radio to the
phone's usb port and another one to to the arduino... because if i am
attaching an external radio i would think it would be possible to make
the xbee's signals look, to the phone, indistinguishable from if i had
simply used wires instead.  maybe i would need to attach a second
arduino on the phone end to decode signals from the radio?  maybe not?
i think that question is more about the functionality of those radios, i
will have to refresh myself on their capabilities.

so assuming that i am running the adk software on the phone, without a
specific need for the bell or whistle in question, is there any real
reason to use the arduino they packaged in the adk?  or any physical
part of the kit at all?  what does a generic arduino need in order to
plug into the usb port on the phone?  firmware? usb chip? something else
that i am missing?

is it possible to use the standards that adk establishes with the
bluetooth functionality that amarino enables?

R.

On 6/7/2011 8:07 PM, Jonathan Lassoff wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 7, 2011 at 7:42 PM, rachel lyra hospodar
> <rachelyra at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I learned a bunch at the meetup but still have tons of questions and
>> sometimes am not sure I understand everything. Is this meetup going to
>> become a semi-regular thing? Miloh suggested monthly might be a good idea.
>>
>> http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-19736_7-20061529-251.html
>>
>> This article seems to me to imply that you can run android os on an
>> arduino??
> 
> No, this is some software to help people develop electronic
> accessories for android phones, built on top of Atmel AVR
> microcontrollers with Ardunio libraries and bootloaders.
> They defined a protocol so that the phone can "discover" devices in a
> standard way.
> 
>> I'm also curious if anyone has heard of/used Amarino. It appears to have a
>> lively community of users.
> 
> It seems pretty cool, and similar to what the ADK aims to do (though
> over Bluetooth), though there doesn't seem to be any strong standards
> of what to talk over the serial port.