Android Things is the IoT platform made by Google and based on Android. You could have guessed that by its name. It is similar to Android Wear, Android Auto, and Android TV in the way that it is an adaptation of Android to another domain, where most of the concepts of the platform are still valid, but there are significant differences as well.

The platform is intended to design and build IoT devices and bring them to the mass market. The key idea behind it is that you can easily prototype your project and, once it is ready, you can move from your developer kit to a simpler and smaller carrier board with just the SoM (System-on-Module).

SoMs are very handy. They are a step up from SoCs (System-on-Chips). They integrate RAM, flash storage, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth on a single module. The official boards come with the FCC certifications, so all the process of getting the software onto them is streamlined.

Throughout the process of going to mass market, Google will provide security updates to the platform, so keeping your IoT devices up to date and secure is no longer something you have to worry about.

All the areas of this process are centralized on the Android Things Console, which has a similar function to the Google Play Console, but is more focused on building images that you can then distribute and deploy.

One of the key advantages of Android Things is that it can make use of almost all of the already existing Android libraries and frameworks, which gives it a head start in terms of tooling. From the developer point of view, it also lowers the entry barrier to make IoT devices, since all the knowledge you have of the Android framework, libraries, and tools is fully transferable.