NOOK Hacking

Ryan Latham

“The army of kernel and OS wizards at xda-developers.com have managed to get both android 2.2(froyo) and android 3.0(Honeycomb) to boot on the nook color. Normally with most android devices, you need to first root the device, get super user access, and then flash a ROM/custom kernel combo if you want to mess with the devices booting OS. “

“This is not the case on the Nook though, as strangely enough B&N designed it to first check the microSD card for a bootable image before loading the EMMC. This allows custom android OSs to be flashed on microSDs and then booted directly off the microSD on the Nook Color. Doing so does NOT void your warranty and allows you to go back to stock B&N OS at any time by removing the microSD. Furthermore the XDA guys extracted an image of android 3.0 from the new android SDK and have it in a microSD flash able form, making the Nook the first device currently released in the world, to run android 3.0. I happen to have the image on my microSD card and its completely bootable. I also have customized windows drivers for the Nook allowing Google's android SDK Eclipse plug in, to connect directly with the Nook. The drivers can also be used to ADB Shell directly into the Nook's protected partitions.”

“I myself and the XDA guys have been very careful to make sure none of it is done illegally or in such a way that the Nook's warranty is voided. If you are interested in android development, using a microSD card and the custom drivers, you can make apps for android and test them out on your Nook.”

Here are the links where you can find everything.

xda-developers where you can find pretty much everything you need with a little bit of digging.

http://www.xda-developers.com/

Here are the android developer forums

http://forum.xda-developers.com/forumdisplay.php?f=864

You can get the current android image here.

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=936995

Nookdevs who started the nook project and have the drivers for it.

http://nookdevs.com/Portal:NookColor

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I kind of got out of the nook color hacking because I got a xoom and have been busy messing around with that. I did however, customize the heck out of mine and got about all I could out of it until honeycomb source code is released.

I think rooting is wise choice because you really unlock the full potential of it by doing it. I will say I became pretty unhappy with my nook while running honeycomb on it. So far all the hackers have managed to get on the nook is a dump of the honeycomb SDK and it really leaves a lot to be desired. Instead of using honeycomb I put Cyanogen Mod's CM7 ROM on the nook, and that is a terrific OS. Its based on the Gingerbread source code and has tons of features. They have customized it to fit the nooks needs by including things like on screen back and menu buttons. The OS also supports OCing the nook to 1.2 GHZ which makes it pretty snappy for most tasks. The only real trade off is that you will have about 4-6 hours of battery life if in constant use, and about 2-3 days standby time. I found this completely acceptable though as the extra features were really handy. With CM7 on it, the Nook is pretty comparable to Samsung tablet.

Eventually a full fledged version of HC will hit the nook, but not until Google releases the source code, which if you have been following HC, might be a while (http://www.droid-life.com/2011/03/24/google-not-releasing-honeycomb-source-for-a-while/).

The only other thing I would consider before rooting is the fact that sometime this month, B&N will release an update that pushes android 2.2 to the nook (http://www.businessinsider.com/nook-color-getting-android-apps-and-flash-2011-3). It remains to been seen how much they will customize it, and what limitations they will put on it. This could be better then a rooted solution but my bet is that it still wont compare. Still, its something to consider. You can always unroot and go back to stock as well.

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if you still want to root it here is where I would start.

http://nookdevs.com/NookColor_Rooting

This is by far not the easiest rooting method, but it is the one I used and its written by the guys who discovered how to root it in the first place. On http://forum.xda-developers.com/forumdisplay.php?f=864 you can find some one click rooting solutions but I would not recommend them as you are at the mercy of whatever joe schmoe wrote the program. I can guarantee that the Nookdevs method will work and is safe as long as everything is done correctly. The other thing to keep in mind is that I have never seen anyone who permanently bricked their nook color. I believe that it is virtually impossible to mess up the nook to the point of no recovery. With a little bit of research and ADB usage, you can pretty much get your self out of any stuck point. I must admit, for me personally it was a total pain in the ass to get ADB to recognize my Nook. The NookDev guide does tell you how to trouble shoot this, but I still had to do a lot of Googling/Installing/Uninstalling in order to get it working.

One problem I did encounter several times when messing around with rooting and custom roms, is that the Nook would freeze up and become unresponsive to power button presses. If you find your self in this situation, there are a couple of things you can do. It should also be noted that the first thing you should do is remove the microSD card as this causes 95% of boot failures. You may also want to try putting it back in and using the methods below if they initially fail with it out.

1. Try holding the power button down for an extended period of time. I am talking like 45 seconds. I know it sounds crazy but I have had to do this a couple occasions.

2. Plug it in and try power it on. If this fails, try method 1 with it plugged in.

3. Hold down the volume up button when you press power. This boots into the recovery partition and almost always works. If it fails unplugged, try using method 2 and 1 while doing this.

4. Hold down both volume up and volume down while doing method 1 and 2.

5. Same as above except use the nook button towards the bottom of the tablet.

6. Try all of the above methods at least 20 times before giving up. The BIOS contains some strange logic where it will attempt to recover if you have tried powering it on twenty times with failure.

7. Plug it into your computer and try the above methods.

8. Make sure it is not plugged in and leave it be for several days. Then plug it in and let it charge fully and repeat the above methods. I had one bad hard lock while flashing a new ROM that caused me to have to do this.

It can be a pain to get the root successfully working and you might have to repeat the NookDev guide several times to get everything to take successfully. Once you do get it working then the next step is to decide whether to stay with the B&N stock OS or flash something a little fancier. A lot of apps don't work correctly with stock B&N OS and since it is running on android Eclaire I find it rather clunky and slow. My advice would be to get a custom ROM since they are easy to flash and mess around with; rooting is the only hard part.

Before flashing ROMs and doing any kind of mods beyond rooting, it is essential that you familiarize your self with both ROM Manager and Clockwork Mod Recovery. ROM manager is an app you can download from the market place that allows you to install custom ROMs and more importantly, install Clockwork Mod Recovery. CMW (short for Clockwork Mod Recovery) is a program that implants its self in your boot partition and allows you to boot into a recovery console with a GUI. You can do everything from CMW including flashing new ROMs, backing up your nook data and apps, deleting partitions, fixing permissions, and whole load of other stuff. In fact, as soon as you root, make sure you create a full backup recovery with CMW. It can either be installed by downloading ROM manager and then installing it from there, or you can create a SD card that boots directly into it without having to install it. You can find a thread with some info on it here http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=971197.

Explaining how to use CMW is a little difficult, so I would recommend watching some youtube clips on it. A short version though is placing the custom ROMs I mention below on the root of your SD card and then booting into CMW and choosing to "install zip from SD card" and then choosing the ROM that you placed on the root. Make sure that you don't unzip these ROMs before placing them on the SD card. Just place the zip files directly onto the card.

When installing ROMs, another thing to keep in mind, is that many will require that you wipe the dalvik/data/system cache/partitions before or after you install the ROM. Usually the ROM instructions will mention something about doing this and which of the partitions must be wiped. There is an option in CMW that lets you do this.

One last thing before I talk about ROMs. Due to the lack of hardware buttons on the Nook, it can be a pain navigating around the ROMs. Some ROMs like CM7 include software buttons to emulate the hardware ones. Even with these though, there will come times when an App takes up the whole screen and you are unable to get to these buttons. Developers anticipated this and have released two programs (that I know of) to combat the lack of buttons. The programs work by placing a persistent button somewhere on your screen that when pressed, expands to show "home", "back", and "menu" buttons. Both of them are fully customizable to the point where you can make them invisible or extremely transparent and just place them in a static part of the screen. They can both be found on the marketplace and they are called..

Button Savior - My personal favorite. You can customize the hell out of it and get what you need from it.

SoftKeys - Still pretty good, but does not offer the options that Button Savior does.

Whenever you install a new ROM, if one of these is not included, I would immediately go download it.

Here are my top picks for custom ROMs in descending order...

1. CM7 - http://www.cyanogenmod.com/devices/nook-color - This is as close to fully functional tablet with the Nook Color as you can possibly come. Its what I personally still run and is an always evolving terrific OS. It has a custom kernel baked right into the ROM with the option of dynamically over clocking the processor. Its based off gingerbread and there for runs pretty snappy and includes all the bells and whistles you would expect. It also has software back/menu buttons built into the Android Status bar at the top of the screen which is extremely useful. Currently they only have nightly builds and an experimental build, but they are pretty stable in their current form and I would expect a stable release in the coming months. If you need support and/or help using this ROM, check out this thread http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=960542. It has a lot of great developers watching it, and if you have questions just post in there and they will usually try and help you.

2. Nookie Froyo - http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=883175 - This is a nice stock Froyo ROM that works well on the Nook. I used this for a couple of weeks and really enjoyed it. Its pretty bare bones though and is not really optimized for the Nook. I did notice that this has not been updated in a few months as development seems to have shifted to the SD card only version, which you can find here http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=922324. This ROM has no menu or back buttons so you will need either button savior or soft keys to get it working correctly.

3. HoneyComb - http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=936995 - To the best of my knowledge, this is the most recent honeycomb build for android. Like I said I before though, its not working 100% and I was unhappy with it. You might want to try using this one first if you really want to try honeycomb. That way if you don't like it you can flash a new ROM over it and wont have to worry about losing your apps.

Here are a couple other projects/ROMs that I have not personally tried but look promising.

PhireMod - http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=954902 - Looks good and I have seen a lot buzz on the forums about this. It also sees regular updates.

Dual Boot Project - http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=959461 - Allows you boot between a couple different ROMS including stock. I liked the idea of this but unfortunately it only works with the custom images that this developer cooks up. Because of this it usually takes him a while to customize new versions of the ROMs and so your perpetually running old stuff. Still, if you did not want to part with your stock B&N OS, then this is looked like a good option.

Lastly, if you ever get stuck on something or just want to research Nook color hacking, the first place you should go is http://forum.xda-developers.com/forumdisplay.php?f=860. This forum is incredibly useful, and some of the top developers on there are real android Nook wizards. I have also found them to be extremely helpful and willing to answer questions, as long as you search for old threads before posting.

I am sure I have forgotten to mention some things here, so if you have any questions just let me know. I have spent waaaay too much time reading and researching this stuff, so chances are I will know the answer or will at least be able to point you in the right direction. If you are on the fence about rooting or flashing custom ROMs, then if you would like I can bring in my Nook for you to borrow for a few days and play around with. I will be posting it on ebay shortly as I don't have anymore time to play with it now that I have my Xoom. I have to work tomorrow, but Friday I should be on campus and can bring it in if you would like.

One other thing, if you have any students that are interested in game development with android, you might want to point them to Unity (http://unity3d.com/). The license is expensive but its worth its wait in gold. It blew away my two years of engine development in mere minutes of use.

Anyways I hope this information is useful and like I said, if you have any questions just let me know.