Prototyping Wearable Devices Using Android

Prototyping wearable devices used to be something that required specialized skills in electrical engineering, embedded development, and mechanical engineering. Today, thanks to the maker revolution, we can combine our knowledge of programming with basic electronics/soldering skills and access to a 3D printer to create useful devices. More importantly, there are now boards that give Android developers the ability to interact with them without needing to create our own custom Bluetooth Drivers and write firmware in C++. In this half-day tutorial, Lance Gleason will take you on a quick tour of some of the options and then do a deep dive into creating a wearable prototype, writing only Android code using the Metawear board. As we build our own running application in this hands-on session, you will learn everything from creating services to connect and interact with the board to accessing the onboard sensors, event logging, and storing data on the device for offline tracking. [Metawear devices will be available for use during the session.]

For this tutorial, you will want to have:

• A laptop with Android Developer Studio
• An Android device that supports Bluetooth 4.0 and that has Android 4.4 or greater
• Enough experience with Android development to be able to import a project, build it, and install it on a phone
• A strong understanding of Android App development