In our ongoing mission to help developers create the widest variety of automated solutions to the world’s thorniest problems, we're thrilled to announce the private beta release of Viam for Android devices, with public availability slated for the near future.
Viam's compatibility with Android offers developers unparalleled flexibility with one of the most open architectures available today for managing smart machines.
Intuitive human-machine interfaces for any device
Android is the predominant operating system for hardware worldwide, powering phones and tablets across 190+ countries. Because Android devices are typically equipped with integrated hardware features like cameras, speakers, and touchscreens, they naturally lend themselves to human-machine interfaces (HMIs), making them indispensable in applications ranging from payment kiosks to fitness equipment to smart home appliances.
Viam now seamlessly integrates as a natural extension of the Android platform. This makes it straightforward to give any machine running Viam a fully functional Android touchscreen, so that operators have more visibility, control, and flexibility.
With Viam, the possibilities for user-friendly consumer machines expand considerably, replacing traditional control panels based on fragile buttons, lights, or switches with dynamic Android-based screens, ushering in a new era of intuitive interaction.
Unleashing Viam's power on Android devices
There are three significant ways that this integration allows any machine running on Android to take advantage of Viam’s core capabilities in fleet and data management. First, users gain the ability to manage their entire heterogeneous fleet, including Android devices, from a unified interface, making data collection and analysis across all machines more efficient.
Second, Android devices are now interoperable with any other machine running Viam, independent of existing vendor constraints. This opens the door to data-driven actuation by Android devices through Viam. For instance, a payment kiosk could unlock a separate refrigerator for a paying customer.
Third, Viam facilitates the customization of AI models tailored to specific machines. Viam leverages the built-in cameras of Android devices to collect data about machine performance, and then uses it to build AI models that are deployed back to machines to make them more efficient.
This AI feedback loop facilitates use cases like leveraging data captured from Android devices to remotely monitor machines in real time for imminent issues, and quickly carrying out predictive maintenance to prevent them from breaking down.
Write code for Viam in Java through our SDK
To further simplify the integration with Android, Viam is also launching a software development kit (SDK) for Java, the primary language used for Android development.
This SDK enables developers to leverage their existing skills to incorporate hardware components and software services onto Android devices through Viam, without the need for customized coding. It joins existing SDKs for Python, Go, C++, and many other common programming languages, giving developers the option to write code for machines however they are most comfortable.
In essence, Viam empowers organizations to create a flexible, adaptable, and interoperable ecosystem to manage all machines and their data from a single platform.
Manage machines from your mobile device
Viam also offers built-in functionality to create user-friendly Android applications for overseeing machines through Flutter or React Native SDKs.
For developers: This empowers organizations to easily create mobile applications tailored to managing their machines, without having to figure out the complex backend technology to build them from scratch.
For operators: This offers the ability to manage devices from mobile phones, making it convenient to monitor machine issues from anywhere, lowering time-to-resolution for potential issues, and preventing painful downtime.
Get Started with Viam and Android now
A select group of partners is currently testing Viam's private beta for Android integration. If you're interested in joining them, reach out to us to start the conversation.
Signing up for Viam is free; explore the platform for yourself and discover how Viam can revolutionize machine fleet and data management for your organization.
