Noel Erskine, Technology Coordinator Norris Schools

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Android on the Nook Our final project worked great! A tablet and eBook reader all for less than $270!

Friday, March 18, 2011

The New Android HoneyComb 3.0 on the Nook!! Final thoughts and directions.
I posted a few days ago, about loading the Android HoneyComb 3.0 on a micro SD card, and then booting to that card to have an Android Tablet and a Nook for the price of one!  We have this up and going... and it it awesome for the money.   Where else can your get a Color eBook reader (The nook) and a brand new wireless Android 3.0 (honeycomb) tablet all for the total price of $270.  (Nook= $250 and micros SD card = $20.)

You can find out more on the web, but here is a quick run down of the steps:
1) Purchase a Nook Color and an 8 Gig class 6 (or higher) micro SD card.
2) You will then go through a process for installing an Android Image on a micro SD card, then install the Android market on that card, and then you can boot to that card to have an Android tablet. If you want to go back to the Nook, you just remove the card, and boot the device to your Nook. Clean, simple and cheap!
3) Navigate to this page, and follow the instructions. http://goo.gl/HqhKm
Some notes on this:
--I used WinImage instead of the one listed in the article. Download WinImage from here (last version is fine, winima85.exe) and install it. You can do without registration, the trial version will work well for 30 days.
--When articles mention ADB, it is a part of the Android SDK which you need to download and install.  It has a few requirements of it's own,
--Read this article on how to install ADB and the Android SDK. http://www.addictivetips.com/mobile/what-is-adb-and-how-to-install-it-android/  (For some reason I could not get the path statement part to work, and I know it looks right... but just would not work.  Not a biggie, just make sure you navigate to the correct folder in the command prompt when you run the commands, and it works.)

--When you install ADB, the key is getting it to recognize the Nook through USB.  This is critical, because you need that in order for the market place to get installed.  (You can just install the image on your micro usb card and boot the Nook to it, and you would have a tablet, but no market app to install other apps.)
--Make sure you do the updated method described in the this article, for installing the market place.
--When you Download HoneyGApps v2  and extract the contents, make sure you put those files in the ADB folder on your computer.  Then open a command prompt in that folder and type HoneyGAppInstall to run the script to install the market place, along with a few Google Apps bundled in that script.

Once you get Android and the market installed, you should be ready to go. (There are some places that talk about over-clocking Android on the Nook, but it looks a little to complicated for me.)  You may want to grab another image of the pristine card with Android 3.0 and the market installed before you start to customize your Android system.  This step will allow you to create another card easily if you want to start over from scratch.

1 comments:

Joe Gehr said...

It is a beautiful thing

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