Android on Kobo: "Tips and Apps"

[Ken Maltby]

Originally Posted by Radium

I'm running 2014-02-28_Android_Kobo_Aura_HD in dualboot mode.
But wait a minute... why is it in Russian??
Anyway to switch to English?

edit: figured myself

As a general rule, if you find a solution to an issue you raised, you should post that solution, for those who may also be looking through the posts for answers to problems.

Luck;
Ken

[Radium]

Originally Posted by Ken Maltby

As a general rule, if you find a solution to an issue you raised, you should post that solution, for those who may also be looking through the posts for answers to problems.

Luck;
Ken

Sorry about being selfish,
I will do.

BTW I noticed the android was draining the battery TOO FAST even with lights OFF.
Is it really draining too fast? or is it just a battery monitor issue?

Anyway, I decided KOreader still beats all the readers available on android.

[embryo]

Originally Posted by Radium

But wait a minute... why is it in Russian??
Anyway to switch to English?

There is a note (and a solution) about this image, at the SD images section, of the first post.

[booklover6]

I searched the thread and found no results. Has anyone tried the Scribd app on the dual boot Android Kobo? Please try and report!

Never mind, the wonderful Nathan of the-ebook-reader.com tried it, and it did not work.

[fanoI]

In this days I've intention to try to install Android on my Aura HD but I've some questions:

1. Installing Android on SD Card there is no danger to brick the device, right?
2. It is possible to use a real graphical bootloader in the future similar to "Kobo Start Menu for example" with two options: 1 Boot to Nickel 2. Boot to Android
3. What is the better image for my Aura HD all are done by angor00 but one has a new kernel but is in Russian (these Russian what hackers ) that should not be a problem as there are instructions to return to English...
4. There is a list of compatible apps? I imagine, for obvious reasons, that games as Angry Birds doesn't work right? Firefox works? In general browsers works better that the Kobo browser that is pretty much unusable ?
5. How is the hardware support? The light works? And the could be set using OSD? The WI-FI is OK? The Battery usage? Deep Standby works (only the ook cover is shown but the device is totally dead as typical for an E-book)?
6. There is a battery 5% off notification? Using CoolReader is the thing I miss more! I'm reading a book then put the device on standby return to it after a day and the device doesn't start... I'm hating it

Thanks!

[denverh]

Hello,

I've been using Android on my Glo for some time now, and I think it's great. Many thanks to everyone who has worked on this. As far as I'm concerned there are only two minor improvements that could be made. One would be a working sleepcover, but that's pretty minor. On the other hand, some kind of full screen refresh while reading books would be nice.

I use FBReader, so I took a look at their source for the Nook, because it has some additional, useful, settings. It's not too hard to trick FBReader into thinking it's running on a Nook, which enables the special eink settings. I also located the place where it checks to see if it's time for a full refresh, based on the number of pages since the last one. The Nook has a different display controller so the screen refresh actions don't work on the Glo, but they also don't cause any problems. I thought it would be easiest to begin with a stand-alone program that could be called from within FBReader to preform the refresh as required. That approach could probably be used for other readers as well.

After quite a bit of searching I found several different examples of code for doing full screen refreshes on a Kobo reader, all for factory firmware, and all for models with 800x600 displays. I recompiled the most likely looking one for the Android environment, after fixing things up for the different screen size, and gave it a try. It didn't work. So I tried a couple others. None worked. They all fail the same way: an ioctl() with MXCFB_SEND_UPDATE returns errno 25. All other ioctl()'s appear to work fine. At least the ones that return information about the display seem to return reasonable values. At this point I'm stuck. Does anyone have any ideas that might help? I've attached a copy of the most recent attempt.

Regards,

Denver

[mblthey]

Hello Together,

I just got my Kobo Glo and installed Android on it. Thank's to everyone here for making this possible it's great!

At the moment I only have a (minor) question: From Embryo's initial post, I got the instructions on how to shut down the backlight:

Originally Posted by embryo

[...]
Kill the Screen LEDS

#!/system/bin/sh
echo 0 > /sys/class/backlight/mxc_msp430_fl.0/brightness

Both must be run as root (SU - SuperUser)
You can use Script Manager. Instructions here, or here.
[...]

What to say? It does work well, but the screen LEDs don't remain switched off. After "waking up" the Kobo they are back on - and I have to run the script again to turn them off.
Is it my mistake, or ist this a general problem?

[fanoI]

Sadly Android installation failed on my Kobo Aura HD, I'm unsure if it doesn't recognize the micro SD (the SD Reader is really bad build IMHO and it is probably defective) I have done pass 2 but the third seems to not install anything... in any case the backup doesn't start and the Kobo sometimes says that the SD is not formatted, other times does not see simply nothing

So I'm asking to you:

1. How to see if the Kobo recognizes the SD with the original firmware
2. My SD is a Sandisk of 8 GB, do I have to buy another? What do you have used?
3. Kobo has closed the "hole" as Sony did and now it is impossible to install Android into this questionable quality device[1], too?

I add this the SD image after being installed onto the card was strange at least seeing it with "MiniTool Partition Wizard" I add this setup:

30 MB (empty)    | 6.5 GB (Android? Fat32) | 128 MB (Android System - Ext4) | 500 MB (Android - Ext4) | 1.0 GB (empty)

IMHO is the first 30 MB partition that gives problems sadly I have not found a working way to merge with the first one or "Minitool" does not works or it is a Windows 8 problem... in the end the best result I have obtained is an empty SD (destroyed partition table )
The Kobo firmware is 3.1.1, thanks for your help.

[1]An e-reader that cannot format books correctly is garbage IMHO

[embryo]

Originally Posted by mblthey

What to say? It does work well, but the screen LEDs don't remain switched off. After "waking up" the Kobo they are back on - and I have to run the script again to turn them off.
Is it my mistake, or ist this a general problem?

Most of the time I use the 'Display Brightness' app.
If you turn the slider all the way down, it closes the screen light and it stays closed after sleep mode.

[fanoI]

Embryo do you have any ideas why it is not working for me?

Thanks!

[mblthey]

Originally Posted by embryo

Most of the time I use the 'Display Brightness' app.
If you turn the slider all the way down, it closes the screen light and it stays closed after sleep mode.

This is just perfect. Thanks a lot embryo!

[JimMcLaren]

Originally Posted by fanoI

IMHO is the first 30 MB partition that gives problems sadly I have not found a working way to merge with the first one or "Minitool" does not works or it is a Windows 8 problem... in the end the best result I have obtained is an empty SD (destroyed partition table )

That partition is necessary! I don't know what's in it but I've read reports of users deleting/shrinking it and then Android won't boot. IIRC, the Android image is 8 GB so you shouldn't have to edit it with Minitool. It sounds to me like you have a bad flash of the image onto your SD card. I'd reimage the card and try again.

[fanoI]

The SD card is a new Sandisk bought only for this and never used for other... and I've tried a lot of times to flash the image so...

The fact is that only the first time it seemed to try to install the last update (the one that should do the backup and set the "boot loader") but the card was not seen (maybe I had to use an other one and not that in which Android should have been?) the other times when I don't get the FAT32 error the update was not installed anymore: the file remained in the (.)Kobo directory untouched.

So recapitulating:

1. The SD is a Sandisk new 8 GB it doesn't say "class 10" but an "HD Video" logo that I suppose is the same
2. The Partition layout is OK and Mini Tool is not showing correctly some "magic" partition (what is? Something relative to Android?)
3. I need another SD to do the backup or the Android SD is OK?
4. How to know if Kobo firmware recognizes the SD card? I cannot see an Alert, an icon nothing
5. There is a way to reinstall all (delete the installed package? If I want to do it using ssh, no problem I'm a linux developer!) or to issue the command via shell?
6. The last partition of 1 GB that is apparently empty could be merged with the 6.5 GB one to have more space?

Do you could answer to my question on my post of 06-24-2014 06:01 PM?
Before resetting the device of the fabric status and retry the procedure again I want to understand this Androidification vail the pain or in the end for read is worst that the bugged internal reader and the poor CoolReader that
is so Cool to lose the settings when the battery goes down ?

Thanks!

[snowwolf]

I've installed Android on my GLO and it works well. But sometimes the screensaver disappear when I turn off the screen, there's only black. Anyone know how to fix it?

[fanoI]

Nothing to do: other SD card (this is a Sony one) and nothing happens!
I'm following the instruction in this page:

http://angor00.blogspot.it/2014/02/b...35062013972671

it is the right page?
The last firmware update simply does nothing no backup and no bootloader installed the device simply restart!

I'm on 3.3.0 firmware could be this the problem? What firmware do you using?
It is possible to downgrade?

Thanks for your help...

P.S. Never delete that 30 MB partition! Now my Sandisk SD has only 30MB of space of type "RAW" there is no way to restore to its correct size (no the Sandisk SD tool does nothing "Read only" it says ) so make attention on what you do... 10 € on the waste bin for me