Cloud Doorbell

The Android Things Doorbell sample demonstrates how to create a “smart” doorbell. The sample captures a button press from a user, obtains an image via a camera peripheral, processes the image data using Google’s Cloud Vision API, and uploads the image, Cloud Vision annotations and metadata to a Firebase database where it can be viewed by a companion app.

Note: The Android Things Console will be turned down for non-commercial use on January 5, 2022. For more details, see the FAQ page.

Screenshots

(Watch the demo on YouTube)

Schematics

Pre-requisites

• Android Things compatible board
• Android Things compatible camera (for example, the Raspberry Pi 3 camera module)
• Android Studio 2.2+
• Google Cloud project with Cloud Vision API enabled
• Firebase project with Database and Storage
• The following individual components:
  • 1 push button
  • 1 resistor
  • jumper wires
  • 1 breadboard

Setup and Build

To setup, follow these steps below.

1. Add a valid Google Cloud Vision API key in the constant CloudVisionUtils.CLOUD_VISION_API_KEY

• Create a Google Cloud Platform (GCP) project on GCP Console
• Enable Cloud Vision API under Library
• Add an API key under Credentials
• Copy and paste the Cloud Vision API key to the constant in CloudVisionUtils.java

2. Add a valid google-services.json from Firebase to app/ and companionApp/

• Create a Firebase project on Firebase Console
• Add an Android app with your specific package name in the project
• Download the auto-generated google-services.json and save to app/ and companionApp/ folders

3. Ensure the security rules for your Firebase project allow public read/write access. Note: The rules in this section are set to public read/write for demonstration purposes only.

• Firebase -> Database -> Rules:

    {
      "rules": {
        ".read": true,
        ".write": true
      }
    }
  

• Firebase -> Storage -> Rules:

    service firebase.storage {
      match /b/{bucket}/o {
        match /{allPaths=**} {
          allow read, write;
        }
      }
    }
  

There are two modules: app and companionApp, the former is on device while the latter on companion device e.g. Android phone.

Running

To run the app module on an Android Things board:

1. Connect a push button to your device's GPIO pin according to the schematics below
2. Deploy and run the app module
3. Take a picture by pushing the button
4. Verify from Firebase Console that pictures are uploaded to a log in the Firebase database of your project
5. Verify from Firebase Console that the uploaded pictures in the log get annotations after a small delay from the GCP Cloud Vision

To run the companionApp module on your Android phone:

1. Deploy and run the companionApp module
2. Verify that you see a new annotated picture every time you push the button

Enable auto-launch behavior

This sample app is currently configured to launch only when deployed from your development machine. To enable the main activity to launch automatically on boot, add the following intent-filter to the app's manifest file:

<activity ...>

    <intent-filter>
        <action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN"/>
        <category android:name="android.intent.category.HOME"/>
        <category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT"/>
    </intent-filter>

</activity>

License

Copyright 2016 The Android Open Source Project, Inc.

Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file distributed with this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership. The ASF licenses this file to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.