It’s no secret that Apps are having a profound impact on consumer electronics devices. Thanks to popular new products like Apple’s iPhone and the Google-powered G1 phone, Apps — those relatively lightweight, Internet-enabled software programs optimized to perform a specific task — have revolutionized the way we think about mobile devices by transforming them into network-enabled computing platforms that are easily customizable and almost infinitely versatile.

But what about other kinds of gadgets? How can electronic products that aren’t used as mobile communications tools take advantage of the opportunities afforded by the proliferation of Apps?

Google’s Android operating system may be part of the answer. Although originally created for use on mobile phones, Android can be adapted to bring App functionality to a wide range of devices — from portable multimedia players, to home appliances, to telecom gear. It also has many advantages: it’s open-source, powerful, supported by a robust development community, and free of charge to use. For hardware manufacturers, then, the challenge comes in figuring out how to adapt Android quickly, reliably, and affordably for use beyond the cellphone.

MOTO’s Android Media Platform (AMP) makes that possible. Created by a team of MOTO engineers, AMP is a full-featured Android reference platform that makes it faster and easier for customers to bring app- enabled products to market. Put simply, AMP is a multimedia development environment for creating Android-enabled products that enjoy full interoperability with the complete library of Android apps.

For example, with AMP, a bedside clock radio could do double-duty as a network-enabled glucose monitor for diabetics. Or a simple dashboard accessory could provide detailed information about your car’s fuel consumption and operating history.

For device manufacturers, AMP provides a powerful set of tools to compress the product design and development process and focus on creating sophisticated technical architectures and user experiences.

For MOTO, AMP is an exciting way to enable innovation by making it easier to embed new capabilities in almost any consumer electronics item. AMP is designed to accelerate the shift from a stand-alone world of “dumb” products to a new, connected universe of “smart” devices.

What other kinds of things could AMP do?  If you have ideas, we’d love to hear about them.

MOTO Labs’  J. Daniell Hebert gave a talk on “Android Beyond the Phone” at the 2009 Maker Faire.

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Lately we’ve been tinkering with deploying Android beyond the phone (using Google’s open-source Android to connect devices to each other and the web), so we thought we’d see if we could leverage the efficiency of Android on a BeagleBoard, the accessibility of wireless webcams, and the ease of a Flickr feed to a custom Google Gadget to track the ups and downs of our metered utilities.

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Google developed Android explicitly to run on cell phones, but it is robust enough to run on other devices. Because Android is open source, and supported by a robust development community, it is a candidate to grow beyond its mobile device roots. 

The development of a USB driver brings Android operating system to the E Ink development kit. Now a new world of creative developers can extend the functionality of and write applications for this low-power screen technology.

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• re.moto Boards and Modules - low-cost wireless device platform that builds on and extends Arduino and Making Things. Very easy to use with Processing and Flash. For designers to technical researchers.
• re.moto Messenger (Client and Server) - web based platform for enabling devices to subscribe and publish messages to other globally or locally networked devices. A web-wide event bus: Like Twitter for devices.

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