At its I/O in May, Google had showcased an amazing new open-source Android-based operating system intended for Internet-connected devices. The OS was dubbed Brillo OS and was expected to launch by the end of this year or early next year.
Today, the tech giant has announced the launch of an early access program for Brillo. Using this, developers will be able to get a taste of the soon to be publicly available full version of the open-source OS.
If you are interested to try the new OS, sign up here.
Brillo brings the simplicity and speed of software development to hardware by offering you a lightweight embedded OS based on Android, core services, a developer kit, and a developer console,
Googlers Gayathri Rajan and Ryan Cairns wrote in a blog post today.
You can choose from a variety of hardware capabilities and customization options, quickly move from prototype to production, and manage at scale with over the air (OTA) updates, metrics, and crash reporting.
The video which talks about Brillo states that the OS will get small updates every six weeks, and bigger “long term support” updates come twice a year. Apparently, the operating system is operational over Intel, MIPS, and ARM-based chips, but for now Google is steering people toward Brillo-certified boards.
There are many interesting features in Brillo which are worth working with. For instance, Google’s Weave Communications protocol will be available on Brillo. This has a software development kit for iOS and Android. The blog post announcing the features of Brillo reads:
Weave comes with a mobile SDK for both iOS and Android, so that you can build apps to control and enhance the connected device experience for mobile users. If you’re an app developer interested in extending the reach of your apps to the physical world of devices, you can use Weave mobile and web APIs to control multiple Weave devices across brands in a single app.
