Getting Started with Android Wear Outline

outline.markdown

Getting Started with Android Wear

Disclaimer

Details presented tonight are likely to change after Google I/O.

What is Android Wear and why should I care

• New API to support wearable devices (currently only watches) coming to market soon.
• Lots of wearable attention at Google I/O
• Incredibly easy to make your apps work well on Android Wear devices

Current devices

• These are coming soon and is not an exhaustive list
• Moto 360: moto360.motorola.com/
• LG G Watch: www.lg.com/global/gwatch/main.html#movie
  • This is rumored to be given away to Google I/O attendees

Getting Setup

• Have a physical Android device running 4.3 or later
• Sign up at developer.android.com/wear
  • Within 24 hours (usually within 1-2 hours) you will receive a confirmation e-mail (http://cl.ly/image/3B0J1K0k1q0H) with two important things
    • Link to download samples, preview, libraries, etc.
    • Link to be a beta tester for the Wear Preview app
• Install required packages through the Android SDK Manager (http://cl.ly/image/2X0S2y223b32, http://cl.ly/image/2D443W443N2U)
  • The Android Wear SDK through the Android SDK Manager
  • The latest version of these packages installed in the Android SDK Manager
    • Android SDK Tools
    • Android Support Library
    • Android Support Repository
• Setup an Android Wear emulator (http://cl.ly/image/3I1k0Q3b2z09)
  • Under the Device drop down pick "Android Wear Round" or "Android Wear Square"
  • Under the Target drop down pick "Android 4.4.2 - API Level 19"
  • CPU/ABI drop down should default to "Android Wear ARM (armeabi-v7a) (Sorry...no HAXM support at this time)
  • Under the Skin option pick "Android Wear Round" or "Android Wear Square" (should match what you picked for a device"
  • Turn on the Snapshot checkbox
  • Save and launch the emulator
• Pair the emulator to your device
  • Ensure USB debugging on your device is turned on
  • Ensure that the the only emulator running is the Wear emulator and the only device plugged in is the device you will use for pairing
  • Open the "Android Wear Preview" app
    • If this is your first time, tap the blue box at the top to open up "Notifications Access".
    • Check the "Android Wear Preview" checkbox, confirm the prompt, hit back.
  • Do some ADB port forwarding magic from the command line using:
    • adb -d forward tcp:5601 tcp:5601
    • (FWIW, adb -d forward <local> <remote> translates to forward all local device ADB traffic (emulator) to the USB connected (-d) remote device).
  • Return to the preview app and your device should now be connected to the Wear emulator (which is now much more interesting!)

Capabilities and limitations

• Current Wear SDK capabilities are still evolving. Keep up with the latest and greatest at developer.android.com/wear/index.html
• You should also NOT ship applications based on the Developer Preview SDK because your app will break when the official SDK is released.

What you can do today

• Extend your app's notifications to Android Wear
  • Add extra pages specific to Wear
  • Add voice reply actions (emulator still requires you to type input...)
  • Stackable notifications
  • This is not a limited set of current features: think about what notifications you can trigger today (geofences, activity detection, etc) and imagine those on Wear.

What is coming soon (next week?)

• Custom UI
• Sending data back to the paired device
• Sensors
• Voice actions

Demo some stuff

• See: http://developer.android.com/wear/notifications/creating.html
• First: Make sure we have all the right imports: import android.preview.support.wearable.notifications.*; import android.preview.support.v4.app.NotificationManagerCompat; import android.support.v4.app.NotificationCompat;
• Also make sure we do not have references to the non-compat version of the Notification classes.
• Extend an app's current notification with notification pages
• Extend an app's current notification with stackable notifications

Useful Sites

• Teaser video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrqZl2QIz0c (start with this?)
• Developer site: developer.android.com/wear
• Wear DevBytes YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWz5rJ2EKKc-kIrPiq098QH9dOle-fLef
• G+ Android Wear Developers Community: plus.google.com/communities/113381227473021565406

Presentation Notes

• Device mirroring: java -jar asm.jar