AndroidThings
Latest
LG's first Google Assistant-powered smart display is rolling out
Need another smart speaker to consider for your holiday gift-giving? The LG smart display we spotted at CES is finally ready to go on sale complete with its 8-inch touch screen, Android Things platform with apps for Google Maps, Photos and YouTube plus Google Assistant-powered AI features. It also has an...interesting official name: the XBOOM AI ThinQ WK9. LG is touting the speakers and their Meridian Audio technology, which it hopes will make the $300 MSRP easier to swallow among all of that competition. That's more than the $200 8-inch Lenovo Smart Display that also runs Android Things and Google's own $150 Home Hub which does not, not to mention the various other options with Alexa, Siri, Facebook or Cortana onboard. It's even more than the $250 JBL Link View which similarly focuses on audio quality. However, at least for Black Friday LG has said it will cost $200, although it's not listed as available at most retailers yet. Liliputing points out a sale page on B&H Photo, and we'd expect to see it everywhere else by the time the big day rolls around.
Google's IoT platform Android Things is open to all developers
To help folks build software to make their hardware products play nice with the Internet of Things, Google announced at the end of 2016 it would create a toolkit called Android Things. It was released in preview to select developers, but today it's available to all of them.
LG puts Google Assistant in its own touchscreen-equipped speaker
Google Assistant's fingerprints are all over the CES 2018 show floor, but it's especially easy to see on a few new Android Things-powered devices. This LG ThinQ Google Assistant Touch Screen Speaker is one of them, and like Lenovo's Smart Display, it's built on a Qualcomm Home Hub Platform.
Google makes it easier to get Internet of Things devices online
It's relatively easy to build your own Internet of Things hardware, but the software is another story. How do you connect it to cloud services, push updates or just write code? Google might help. It's trotting out a developer preview of Android Things, a toolbox that theoretically makes connecting IoT devices as straightforward as writing an Android app. Think of it as a more mature, more accessible Project Brillo. You're not only using ordinary Android developer tools (Android Studio and the official SDK), but tapping into Google Play Services and Google Cloud Platform. In theory, most of the heavy lifting is done for you -- future versions in the months ahead will even grab regular updates (both from you and Google) and use Google's ad hoc Weave networking.
