Google's Android Ambitions Go Beyond Mobile

PolygamousRanchKid writes "Android has become the top smartphone operating system in the United States, but Google's ambitions for it go well beyond tablet computers and smartphones, even beyond the mobile Web. Now Google says Android can also become the first mass-market bridge between the virtual world and the physical world, allowing smartphone apps to control light bulbs and home medical devices. Hoping to spark a wave of creativity similar to what Apple started when it opened the iPhone app store, Google distributed hundreds of circuitry kits to developers at last month's I/O conference. The Android Open Accessory Development Kit (ADK) allows Android's software to operate and communicate with motors, sensors, controllers and relays, allowing developers to create an interface in which a smartphone app could control or collect data from a thermostat, a lawn irrigation system or a group of lighting fixtures. 'The opportunity exists to dramatically change how you control your home,' said Tom Benton of Lighting Science. Over time, 'we're talking about the elimination of the wall switch.'"

Comments

X10

[Anonymous Coward]

Otherwise known as the X10 system...

Apple Will Be There

[MightyMartian]

Apple's not far behind. Plans are already in the works for the iDildo. Mobile orgasms... there's an app for that!

Re:Apple Will Be There

[blair1q]

you mean there's a fap for that.

Re:Apple Will Be There

[MightyMartian]

Sadly, a bunch of cheap 'Droid imitators will have poor touch sense and multitouch will cause the DroidDildo to rotate in unpredictable ways.

No we are not.

[LWATCDR]

People will still want a way to turn on and off devices that do not require you to find a remote. Maybe the wall switch will be part of the network but they will still be there.
When I go to bed at night I put my cell on the charger. I do not want to have to take my cell or my remote with me to the bathroom to turn on the light. I do not want them to be automatic because I want to go into the bathroom and then turn on the light so I do not wake up my wife.

Re:No we are not.

[vlm]

I do not want them to be automatic because I want to go into the bathroom and then turn on the light so I do not wake up my wife.

You can automate this with misterhouse using 90s technology. The 00s technology insteon is just like the ancient X10 stuff except its reliable, the address space is huge, and its about twice the cost. I found the upgrade from X10 to insteon some years ago to be worth it, your mileage may vary.

I don' t have the perl code handy but it boils down to when you get the trigger for door closing, turn the light up at 25% illumination if during "sleep hours" or 100% during the day. Also the fan. The door opening trigger is simpler, just turn off the light and the fan gets an off timer set to shut off the fan in a minute or whatever.. Depending on your definition of "lines of code" and your style, its about 4 to maybe 8 lines of code total and takes about 5 minutes to write and test. A wifi laptop is the ideal misterhouse development system...

This is a slight adaptation of the code I use on my front and back doors and garage door to auto-illuminate my lights at night. Open either the side door or the garage door and the path lights up. Easy easy easy.

Re:No we are not.

[MikeDirnt69]

Are your doors Self-Satisfied?

Re:No we are not.

[SnarfQuest]

The evening is getting intimate, and you want to dim the lights

You: One moment honey *tap* *tap* *tap* *click* *tap* *tap* *tap* *tap* *tap* *tap*
Her: What are you doing?
You: Just a minute *tap* *tap* *click* *tap* *tap* *tap* *tap* *click* *tap* *tap* *tap*
Her: Who are you texting?
You: I'm just trying to ... tap* *click* *tap* tap* *click* *tap*
Her: Well, I hope you're happier with her than you are with me. *slam*
You: tap* *tap* *click* *tap* *tap* *tap* *tap* *click* *tap* *tap*
Lights dim.
You: Ok, where were we ....

Re:No we are not.

[countertrolling]

Well, if the light does come on automatically, it probably means you're pissing in the refrigerator..

Re:No we are not.

[ColdWetDog]

I felt the same way when I saw that everything from apple has no buttons or a single button....

I suppose you want toggle switches for individual memory addresses?

Usurper

[Microlith]

Is this Google trying to usurp the successes had by the Arduino community and tie access to these peripherals to Android or something?

'The opportunity exists to dramatically change how you control your home,' said Tom Benton of Lighting Science. Over time, 'we're talking about the elimination of the wall switch.'

But I don't want to have to buy an Android device just to turn the lights on in my house :(

Re:Usurper

[maxwell demon]

Android recently shipped on its 100 millionth unit. iOS has recently shipped on its 200 millionth unit.

That's irrelevant. The relevant question is how many of the units are in use. Given that iOS is longer on the market than Android, it's not unlikely that there are more abandoned iOS devices than abandoned Android devices.

Having said that, StatCounter still shows more iOS than Android, although far from twice as much.

misterhouse

[vlm]

allowing developers to create an interface in which a smartphone app could control or collect data from a thermostat, a lawn irrigation system or a group of lighting fixtures.

Welcome to misterhouse from the 90s? Everything old is new again!

http://misterhouse.sourceforge.net/

I have set this up, I can control my lights and stuff from my ipod touch web browser, and it is in fact a completely useless cool hack.

I DO use misterhouse to automate the heck out of timing and some simple virtual timers (outside light shuts off X minutes after I turn it on) and also some virtual relay logic (basement stairs light controlled by position of basement door using the most hardware and software possible instead of a simple relay). Useful as that has been, "control the lights using the ipod" has been quite useless.

Google should begin courting important industry...

[bogaboga]

In the automotive industry, look at Ford. They are 'cooperating' with Microsoft. Given a choice, I'd rather have Android in my car as compared to any offers from Microsoft.

Oops, forgot my phone

[MBCook]

"We're talking about the elimination of the wall switch."

So if I forget my phone at work, I can't turn the lights on in my apartment? Brilliant!

The idea of interfaces using the new Android stuff is interesting, but it seems like we'll get into another one of those situations where everyone defines their own standard (which they change when convenient) and nothing works well. The light bulbs in one room are GE bulbs which can't be controlled the by same software as the Sylvania bulbs, but that's OK because the new bulb uses different software than the old ones so I need a patch to the software for that. Look in a book for any home receiver or DVR and look at the HUNDREDS of codes used to control various AV equipment, even from a single manufacturer.

I'll wait for some good standards to be ironed out and become dominant before jumping on this bandwagon. It never really happened in the TV space. Being able to look up a TV show on my iPhone in a guide program and push a button to tune to it would be nice, but that only works right now with some company's cable boxes and their app.

Of course, do I really care if I can individually adjust every light (or anything else) in my house? I doubt I need that kind of control. We're going to go through that phase where people find out what's useful... and I'm not interested in being someone stuck with an something like the Android fridge Samsung has started advertising.

Re:Oops, forgot my phone

[smellsofbikes]

For what it's worth, there are already several open standards for lighting communication, including 0-10V and DALI, and both have reasonably wide adoption. The consumer marketplace could well be controlled enough that a major manufacturer might be able to push a protected, patented, proprietary interface and give it some goofy name like Y11, but in the industrial lighting space -- and that includes outdoor, sign, and indoor in factories, warehouses, malls, government buildings, and sometimes even apartment complexes -- the market is fragmented and people would rather design things that work with existing control systems than try to talk customers into buying complete systems. I know a bit about this since I've been designing a lot of DALI transceivers lately. They're pretty cool: noise-resistant, multi-topology, and polarity-agnostic so you can string them up beside industrial 440VAC and hook the wires together any old way you want and they'll still work.

There's also a lot of work going on in mesh networking, but that's nowhere near as standardized, as far as I can tell.
As for the 'forgot the phone' thing, if this is being aimed at consumers that's merely a happy side-effect: the main point is so building management companies can have fine-grained control over dimming, and lighting that reports back when it's dying or dead to minimize maintenance costs. It'll be centrally controlled so forgetting phones won't be a problem. Most of the stuff that's in the pipeline does ambient light sensing, motion sensing, heat sensing, and sound sensing, and likely RFID, so it can figure out if people need lights on even though they're still (in the bathroom) or if they need lights turned off (in the bedroom), or if lights should turn on well in advance of someone approaching (as they cross a parking lot or walk up to the front door) or if it can come on milliseconds before the person gets to the place where light's needed (hallways).

Wall switch removal is not the goal.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

The goal is to replace the wall switch with a small panel that will contain "sponsored" ads.

Unwritten Addendum:

[Bieeanda]

"We're also hard at work bugging the Hell out of the ADK, so that your Android device phones us to deliver vitally handy information that we can use to make educated guesses about your lifestyle habits. Thermostats, duration and frequency of lights going on, and all of the other things that worry people about so-called smart utility meters add up to tons of demographic data that nobody will ever dream that they're divulging!"

It's the home of the future!

[boristdog]

I can cook a meal, change TV channels, adjust the AC, let the dog out and turn on the porch light all while sitting on the couch!

I never have to move! This is truly the most wonderful thing. Standing up and walking around is so pre-21st century!

Wha?

Re:It's the home of the future!

[Anonymous Coward]

I can do all that already in my NYC apartment!

Although, to be fair, not because it's high tech. It's just that small.

A decent Android based x86 desktop please.

[w0mprat]

Why? Because it would be effective enough to get stuff done with. Also some x86 Android builds I've tried are something like a 90mb ISO and boot in about 5 seconds. Admittedly a proper desktop Android distro would be 100-150mb + because of drivers and additional apps. But it makes you wonder how we put up with bloated multi gigabyte OSes packed with decades of legacy cruft.

Been there, done that, no thanks.

[PhantomHarlock]

There are definitely some advantages to home automation, but for now I don't think it's worth the hassle. I've done X-10 and Insteon, and with the Insteon stuff, unless you have perfect power to your house (or whole house UPS) most of the light and switch modules will go bad. I got so tired to fixing broken modules that I took all of it out and put the original switches back in.

things are getting better, but not cheap enough nor good enough to make it worth it for me.

Home automation enthusiasts need to admit that it's still in the hobby phase, much like early computing.

Solve the battery problem first....

[westyvw]

I can imagine a lot of cool things to do with a phone. But first I want one that lasts for at least a month without recharging. Otherwise, no deal.

Wrong answer

[Animats]

Home control has been around for a long time without catching on. I live in a house built in 1950, and it has "home control" - two rows of toggle switches in the kitchen and a large number of 3-way and 4-way toggle switches. There was even an override switch in the master bedroom that turned on all the outside lighting. (Those are now on motion detectors.)

In the 1960s, there was a fad for relay-controlled lighting and outlets, controlled through 24VAC relays. That never became popular, especially because the relays tended to burn out.

Then there was X10, the first major power-line based system, in the 1980s. Then Echelon, a better power-line system, in the 1990s. Then we had the "every light bulb gets an IPv6 address" crowd.

What's actually getting installed are non-networked wall switches with PIR motion detectors to turn off the lights when nobody is around. They do the job and take no user attention. Which is the whole point.

This sort of thing makes more sense in industrial, office, and commercial buildings. There, though, the trend is not towards hooking everything to a remote control. It's adding sensors to make it fully automatic. You can get commercial devices that go in a return air duct and sense temperature, humidity, CO2, CO, volatile organic compounds, and smoke. Then the room just does the right thing.

When there's nobody in the room, CO2 is low, and humidity on the supply duct is no higher than intake air. The system can then cut airflow to very low levels, let the temperature drop or rise a bit to save energy, and recycle most of the air. As soon as someone enters the room (there's often a motion sensor for this) the temperature margins tighten up to comfort levels and the airflow goes up a bit. If a lot of people enter the room, the CO2 and humidity levels start to climb, and the HVAC system cranks up fan speeds, cuts in chillers, and opens and closes dampers to compensate. Detection of CO (probably smokers) or VOCs (probably someone painting) means input airflow has to go way up and air has to be exhausted to the outside, not recycled. Smoke detection activates emergency modes and alarms.

Now that's doing it right, not some dork trying to operate the system from a touch screen.

More practically, awesome for small biz owners

[AlienIntelligence]

When I had a brick and mortar, I used X10.

Was much easier to control lights, switches, etc.

I think instead of homes, where even if things are
"routine" they are more likely to escape routine,
such control would be MUCH more helpful and a
benefit to the small business owner.

Imagine a program like Tasker, as you approach
your GPS locale, or your phone associates with
your wifi in your shop, it triggers the lights on, the
open sign... maybe even starts your brew.

Even with X10, it took a few precious seconds to
activate my "opening light scheme".

[Just to point out before I have detractors, the time
to start up the lights, was spread out. Not sure of
all municipalities/power co's but mine charged for
peak loads. If I was to turn on all the lights at the
same time, (fluorescent), I would get dinged pretty
mightily. This was the 90s... possibly this has now
changed?]

Instead, all automated, I drive up to the store and
by the time I open up, I won't have to tell a waiting
customer to hold on a minute as I do the opening
routine.

I can just say, c'mon in!

-AI

Re:Already exists

[AlienIntelligence]

At my house, we've replaced our door locks with SchlageLink devices.

You techies out there that haven't tried this system...
you're missing out.

My wife fought tooth and nail against it... it only took a
few times of not having to dig for keys for her to love it.

Of course I never mentioned to her that I expect it to
be hackable someday, lol.

-AI

Re:How do I find my cell phone in the dark?

[countertrolling]

Ring it from your land line..