Introducing the IOIO for Android
Hack your Android-based phone with the SparkFun IOIO
We kind of wanted to wait to post about this product until we had stock (you'll notice it's out of stock right now - with backorders allowed) but this has been bouncing around the internet for a few days and it seems the cat is officially out of the bag. So without further ado, meet the IOIO for Android.
The IOIO (pronounced "yo-yo") is a board specifically designed to work with your Android-based phone (OS 1.5 or newer). This gives you all kinds of access to your Android phone via USB and is fully controllable from within an Android application. You can read more about the IOIO (and its development) at this blog.
The IOIO board contains a single MCU that acts as a USB host and interprets commands from an Android app. In addition, the IOIO can interact with peripheral devices in the same way as most MCUs. Digital Input/Output, PWM, Analog Input, I2C, SPI, and UART control can all be used with the IOIO. You can write code to control these interfaces the same way you would write an Andoird app with the help of an app-level library. This means you can use all the great features of your phone - computing power, Internet/Bluetooth, GPS, the LCD touch screen, etc - and combine them with the ability to easily add peripheral devices to interact with the outside world.
We are really excited to see what kind of projects you all come up with using this device. As I mentioned, the board is currently out-of-stock but we are working on getting the first builds done soon. Happy hacking!
