Google has quietly released Developer Preview 4.1 of Android Things, the Android-based Internet-of-Things (IoT) platform, to developers. The update primarily focuses on adding new hardware that is supported to the platform as well as addressing bug fixes and performance improvements.
On the new hardware front, the new Pico i.MX6UL revision B board is now supported. That board supports external peripherals from the likes of Adafruit and Pimoroni which dev’s can use to build their IoT solutions. The release notes point out that the beta version of this board is not supported.
Beyond this, multiple improvements can be found in this Developer Preview. Boot times for i.MX7D based hardware solutions has been improved and a version of the Google Play Services is now available. This smaller, lighter version of Services requires that developers be using the play-services 11.0.0 or later in their build.gradle of their solution.
Along with the release notes, in the blog post about Developer Preview 4.1, you will find links to various keynotes from Google I/O this year talking about the platform, the concepts behind it and enablement of it for solutions. You will also find a link to the Code Labs from I/O to test your solutions.
