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Device Control Update (DCU) feature - Beta

Note

This is an additional Update Factory feature that requires a special proprietary version of the UF Android Client Service. Please contact us for more information.

The DCU feature introduces a novel update mechanism enabling Update Factory to perform "Device Control" tasks on Android. The tasks are implemented as Android applications, which are installed on the device by the UF Android Client Service and subsequently removed when execution is complete.

The Android DCU applications (dcu-service-app) implement the DCU APIs provided by the dcu-api library. The dcu-service-app uses the APIs to communicate status updates and the update result to the UF Android Client Service, which in turn forwards the messages to the Update Factory server.

The lifecycle of a DCU update is as follows:

  1. the UF Android Client Service downloads and installs the dcu-service application
  2. the UF Android Client Service launches the dcu-service-app and awaits the completion of the dcu-service task
  3. on task completion or when a timeout expires, the UF Android Client Service uninstalls the application.

Each step of the process is reported to the Update Factory server, with the task result (success or failure) closing the update flow on the server.

Example DCU use cases

DCU can be used for example to perform the following tasks at scale:

  1. connecting to a specific Wifi access point
  2. changing system configuration
  3. wiping cache or data of a specific application
  4. rebooting the device
  5. factory resetting the device

API and reference implementation

Please contact us to get access to:

  1. UF Android Client Service beta apk with DCU feature
  2. dcu-api aar library
  3. documentation of DCU application API
  4. source code of the reference DCU application implementation