Professional Android Open Accessory Programming with Arduino

Chapter 4

Setting up Development Environments

WHAT’S IN THIS CHAPTER?

• Setting up the Android development environment
• Setting up the Arduino development environment
• Hello Android Open Accessory app

WROX.COM CODE DOWNLOADS FOR THIS CHAPTER

The wrox.com code downloads for this chapter are found at www.wrox.com/remtitle.cgi?isbn=1118454766 on the Download Code tab. The code is in the Chapter 4 download and individually named according to the names throughout the chapter.

In this chapter you set up the development environments needed to successfully build and test Android accessories. Because the Android accessory consists of two different artifacts — the Android application and the Arduino electronics hardware — you have to set up two different environments.

In addition to setting up the environments, you also take them out for a test run; for this you’ll use some example projects already available.

SETTING UP ANDROID DEVELOPMENT

You have two options when developing for Android. You can choose to do so in Java only, or use a mix of Java and C through the Android Native Development Kit (Android NDK). However, in this book you develop in the Java language only, using the Android SDK. But, before you start writing the code using the SDK you need a development environment to write in.

Most Android developers choose Eclipse for their everyday Android programming. Eclipse has a well-developed and maintained plug-in created by Android, for Android, which makes Android development a breeze. ...