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.

Daniell covered the basics of why the technology community is excited about Google’s new open source operating system, explained how Android will connect previously “dumb” devices, and shared his view on why Android is relevant to the maker community.

Watch the excerpts and get your Android 101:

The Maker Faire was a blast, and full of stimulating manifestations of DIY thinking+doing.  We enjoyed sharing our experiments and prototypes with the MAKE crowd and look forward to next year.

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.

Why webcams?  While there may be a few compelling (low-cost, low-impact) products out there to monitor your electric meter, there are no comparable products for reading gas or water meters.

So until the really smart grid arrives, here’s a way to chart your whole utility spend on your own Google homepage.

Home Energy Monitor Ecosystem

The MOTO DIY Android Home Energy Monitor (AHEM) utilizes an average wireless network. Wireless webcams take pictures of the ever-changing dials on the user’s utility meters.  A BeagleBoard running Android and the MOTO AHEM custom applications push the pictures up to a Flickr photo set.

MOTO AHEM application prompts and transcribe numbers into your Flickr image tag. Saving the image spurs the MOTO Labs’ Google Gadget will automatically chart meter activity on the user’s Google home page.

The Essentials

System Diagram

Add a Tweet-A-Watt

Some of the folks at MAKE Magazine made a clever hack of the ubiquitous watt metering device, the Kill-A-Watt. Their Tweet-A-Watt lets you track consumption and measure efficiency on devices that are typical electricity hogs: air conditioning, washers, dryers, refrigerators.

We like the Tweet-A-Watt and we wanted to add it to our Google Gadget. So we leveraged the Tweet-A-Watt’s Python application to sit on the BeagleBoard’s linux layer, and added a Python interpreter on the BeagleBoard, then used a socket to communicate with our Android application for sending to Twitter.  (We did this because Android does not support Python.)

Now we can track its activity and reporting on our homepage right alongside our whole-house utility chart.

Do it Yourself

Download detailed step-by-step instructions here.

Locate Meters		Collect the Gear
Mount the Cameras		Set Up Hardware
Configure Android and Flickr with MOTO AHEM		Tag Images in Flickr
Build and Set Up Tweet-A-Watt		Set Up MOTO Lab’s Google Gadget

More Steps

• Definitely would prefer to utilize OCR so we can eliminiate the klugy transcription step. Anyone interested?
• More fun might be to hack the Black and Decker Power Meter to populate the MOTO Google Gadget.

Greater Context on Smart Grid

• You may have heard about the $4.5 billion the February stimulus package set aside for the build-out of our nation’s smart grid, but check out this description of billions more for associated technologies.
• A recent report by Deliotte predicted “that in 2009, SmartGrid companies may generate $25 billion in revenues, and represent the biggest and fastest growing sector in the GreenTech – possibly even the entire – technology market.”
• Read through a history of Earth2Tech’s editor Katie Fehrenbacher’s posts tagged “energy” and you’ll start to understand the players, the pace, and high stakes involved in this massive energy infrastructure upgrade. Check out also the archive of their recent GreenNet conference.
• It was Fehrenbacher’s survey piece on Energy Dashboards for the Home that tipped us over to this somewhat reactionary choice of webcams for our metering system.
• Energy pundit and engineer Saul Griffith’s Wattzon personal calculator tool might offer the smartest vision for a user experience that could fulfill this drive to know (and thus change) what we consume.
• Google Power Meter is the one to watch, of course. Read Google’s letter to the California Public Utilities Commission where they assert the public’s right to access personal real-time smart grid data.
• Saul Griffith’s sobering and very smart Climate Change Recalculated presentation depicts the challenge of the scale of infrastructure reorganization required to stymie the climate change snowball. Highly recommended.

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.

Android Meets E Ink from MOTO Development on Vimeo.

Why E Ink?

E Ink is an electronic paper display technology with a paper-like, high contrast appearance, ultra low-power consumption, and a thin, light form. It is “bi-stable” – meaning it only uses power when it refreshes the screen. The advantages of this kind of low-power screen device updated via wireless internet access could bring this connected technology to wearable computing or other screen uses that demand long-term deployment before recharging.

Digging Deeper

MOTO labs is working towards customized solutions that employ not only Android but Ubuntu, Linux, and Adobe AIR platforms for custom web-connected application development.  We are actively extending our multi-touch and gestural interfaces expertise to these platforms. MOTO is also developing prototypes for better remote management of connected devices with a range of approaches from Mac & PC based device management applications to over-the-air wireless firmware and software updates. Stay tuned to labs.moto.com for more on this thread.

Building a Bridge

Picture below shows how the E Ink broadsheet development kit is connected to Beagle Board via USB. A custom E Ink driver acts as the bridge.

The E Ink screen image shows the signature Android clock-scape.

Components 

A diagrammatic view on how the application processor (Beagle Board) connects up to the display co-processor (E Ink Broadsheet) via USB.

Ideas for next generation connected devices? Email collaborate@labs.moto.com or leave a comment here.

Links

• TI Beagle Board development kit
• E Ink development kit

Re.moto system enables quick development and collaboration, but the more you know the deeper your experiment.

1. Creatives – Technical and Non-technical designers who just want to get a re.moto device working quickly without much hassle. No understanding of hardware required. Plug and play. Focus on your interactive application, not the technology and then share your demo.
2. Makers – Technical who want to experiment with new hardware and applications and make the resulting tools widely available and easy-to-use. Re.moto system framework: Re-use, expand, publish and share work.
3. Researchers – Researchers who want to experiment with mesh networks, for example, and other applications with low cost RF networks. Skills not constrained to PC. Can access the raw hardware and develop new models.

Real World Applications

re.moto is currently a research platform, but the roadmap quickly leads to real-world applications.

• Home Automation – Inexpensive and ubiquitous displays, controls, and sensors with real-time updates.
• Home Diagnostics for applications in Medicine and Electronic Health Record
• Green Resource Management
• Wibree – emerging standard for ubiquitous low cost connection to mobile phones
• Displays Everywhere

re.moto Whitepapers

Download the remoto device whitepaper and remoto server whitepaper.

Credits