Testing Android apps using a Nook HD

I've been doing some android development on the side lately, and have been using my phone for testing since my experience with emulation has been terrible so far.  However my phone is an old Gingerbread phone and there were some features in the newer versions of Android that I wanted to take advantage of.  I have a Nook HD which is built upon the Ice Cream Sandwich version of Android, so I took on the task of using the Nook to test.

It wasn't the easiest experience to configure this, so I wanted to document this while it is fresh in my mind.  First you need to read this document:

https://nookdeveloper.zendesk.com/entries/21943338-nook-developer-start-up-guide

Start with the standard Android dev environment:  The ADT bundle you download at Google.

You have to install something called the Nook SDK which you can install by using the Android SDK Manager tool inside of Eclipse.  It's in the Window menu.  Then, follow directions in the document.  The SDK Manager tool looks like it is also used to update your dev environment and a bunch of stuff was already selected, so I just installed all of that along with the Nook SDK.  But I really think the Nook SDK was the only thing I needed checked.

You do need to set the PATH variable.

This is where things get stupid.  If you're just using the emulator, I don't think you need this, but of course I wanted to run apps directly on the device.  The Android Debug Bridge (adb) is some kind of command that Eclipse uses to side load apps onto your device for testing.  The document shows you how to test to see if your device is seen by adb.  Mine wasn't seen (of course).  It suggests you install some special drivers.  To get the drivers, you have to register as a Nook developer and get approved.  There are silly questions that you just make up answers to and wait 8 hours, and then you're in.  After that, download the drivers.  In Device Manager, I had to "Uninstall the device", and then click on the device that was labeled BNTV400 (not MyNOOK) and then I install (or maybe it was update) the driver and browse to the driver you downloaded.  Once this was done, adb could see the device.  I did have to adb kill-server, adb start-server, once before it would work with Eclipse.

I'm actually quite surprised I got this working.