Four ways to send and receive data between your IoT device and Android device using USB
I develop IoT devices such as smart home controllers for fun. Those devices are usually based on microcontrollers such as ATMEGA/ATTINY and lack meaningful input/output options. After investigating numerous ways of communicating with those devices I decided to use an Android device as a controller. This worked well, so I would highly recommend if you develop a smart device – a sensor, a controller or an IoT device – consider making it communicate with Android devices. This way an Android app you develop could read and process the data from the sensor, or you can even use Android device as a controller for your IoT device.
This has a number of benefits comparing to other options – such as using a separate touch screen – and the price and availability being the most. Android tablets are widely available, and a cheap noname Android tablet could be purchased for around $20. Despite the price tag it would still pack decent processing power and memory (comparing to your IoT device), a color touch screen, battery backup and a number of connectivity interfaces. It is also supported by the mature development community. Thus the number of Android devices on market and the easiness of development makes it an attractive option from technical and business perspective.
While a typical Android tablet packs a number of hardware interfaces which could be used to communicate with Android, this article would focus on using the USB interface because it has obvious advantages:
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