At this point in your Mason journey you have a Devkit device which has initial customization for your company installed. You will notice the device is locked down into a Kiosk mode, only allowing usage of WiFi and Bluetooth outside of your application. After getting a feel for the device we encourage you to customize it to your own requirements. To do so you’ll need to remove the settings we deployed to the device when we shipped it to you.
To remove these settings there are a few steps you can take once you are logged in to your Controller account:
The easiest step is to move the device into the unassigned group which will reset all settings on the device. You can do this by going to the Select the Devices tab and clicking the check mark to the left of the device you like to move, then select Move at the bottom left corner of the controller.
After you select Move, select the unassigned group. This will factory reset the device.
Now that your device is reset you can begin to customize the device to fit your exact needs.
Build a new deployment Group in Controller
As you create your build, you’ll need to assign your devices to a group in order to deploy your configurations via projects. Groups can be created either via Controller or the Mason Platform APIs.
To create a group, head to the Mason Controller interface. Click the plus sign in the top right corner and choose “New deployment group” from the dropdown menu:
Add your group name and description. You can organize groups in whatever manner best suits your workflow so consider the naming conventions that might be most useful to you down the line. We find that many Mason customers like to create groups that correspond to types of end users (i.e. patients or clinicians), product types (i.e. clinician tablets), or where a product is at in the development lifecycle (i.e. QA, staging, production).
Build and deploy your project using Controller
Using our web-based Controller interface is a quick and straightforward way to build and deploy your project to your device fleet. We recommend it for users who are less technical or less comfortable building with the CLI.
Follow the steps below to build and deploy your very first project. You’ve got this!
1. Get familiar with Mason definitions
Now that you have a Controller account, you can begin building your first project! Before we start, here are some definitions and concepts to get familiar with:
Groups:
A group is a way for you to organize your devices. Devices will default to the “Unassigned” group. Any given device may only belong to one group at a time, and apart from the default “unassigned” group, each group may only comprise one device type.
Configs:
A configuration, or “config,” is a static representation of Mason OS. Configs define the behavior of your device, including applications and media. They are versioned YAML documents that reference valid attributes and values defined in the config documentation for your device. Mason has over 500 configs you can use to customize your device. Find more information on our configs HERE.
Projects:
A project is a collection of versioned Mason OS configs. As you push new versions of your project's Mason OS config, the project will “build” and verify that the Mason OS config you've specified is valid. Successful builds can be deployed to device groups that have families that match the device family of your project. If you try to deploy a failed build, the deployment will fail.
2. Start a new build
Kick off your first project by clicking the Projects button in the top right corner and hitting “+ New.” You’ll start by choosing the device model you’re building your Project around: our smartwatch, handhelds, or tablet.
Work through the wizard, inputting your Project name and description — we recommend using naming conventions that help you identify one project out of many. Consider things like device type, project purpose, where your project is being deployed geographically, anything that could be useful to you later on.
Choose an API level — this corresponds to the Android version on your device: level 25 for Android 7, level 27 for Android 8, or level 30 for Android 11.
Next, you’ll want to upload different artifacts (which consist of APKs, media files, and configs). If you need sample files to work through this walkthrough quickly, feel free to download our example artifacts below or use your own:
- Download a sample APK file
- Download a sample boot animation file
- Download a sample splash screen file
- Download a sample config for a handheld device
- Download a sample config for the watch
Your final step in the build wizard is to review what you’ve done thus far and choose or create a group to deploy this brand-new project to. ”
If everything looks right, you can now choose to “Only Build” or “Build & Deploy” your new project. Choose “Only Build” if you’re not ready to apply updates to your devices in real time. If you want to apply your project configs immediately, choose “Build & Deploy.” Any devices within the deployment group that are powered on and charged beyond 20% should begin to download the project update you just pushed.
To see the details of your project, head to Controller, click Projects in the top right corner, and choose the project you want to review. You can see what a Project Details page looks like, which includes all the information that you input when you're creating your first project:
- Identifier
- Description
- Device type
- API level
- Current and Previous Builds (a Build refers to a customized Android OS that you create)
- The artifacts you’ve uploaded
That’s all you need to do to build and deploy a project to your devices using the Mason Controller.