CANdroid
We have worked closely with a leading embedded systems development company to provide a ground-breaking solution which enables easy monitoring and logging of communication interfaces, including CAN, RS232, RS485, I2C, SPI, analogue and digital i/o - as found in various automotive and industrial applications. This was achieved by MCG Embedded developing an Android App which interfaces with a bespoke hardware module via Bluetooth, using the rfcomm (serial) API. The hardware interface uses an ARM Cortex-M0 microcontroller and was designed by our customer.
By using the Android platform, we were able to make a robust system at a much lower cost than equivalent products in the market, since the Android environment offers all of the user interface features one would expect and therefore the hardware development could concentrate on the interfacing to the target system.
This cross-platform challenge was only made possible by MCG Embedded's dual experience of both Android and low-level embedded, including debugging and developing code in C using Keil uVision.
We are now looking at porting this to other handheld devices, as well as expanding the functionality of the application, which has been designed with a modular base to allow further "plug-ins" to be developed. Although this project is still in progress, it has already been successfully demonstrated at shows such as ARM TechCon 2012 and Embedded World 2012, and is scheduled for final release in mid-2013.
More details are available on www.candroid.co.uk.