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Nook Color Go Boom, Not Book


A fireworks retailer has hit upon a new use for tablets. They’ve refitted 300 Nook Colors to act as video players for the showroom floor.

An Android hacker working for a national fireworks chain just posted his latest project over on XDA Forums. For some time now his employer has been looking for better ways tp show off some of the more visually spectacular products. As you can see from the demo video below; we’re not just talking sparklers; some of these things go boom in a big way.
They first thing they tried was TVs in the showroom, but that didn’t help with giving a one-off presentation to individual customers. So they next tried to use Acer Iconia Android tablets to demo the videos, but found them to be too bulky and heavy to carry around. Luckily for them the Nook Color has neither problem. After testing a set of 7 NC in their Florida stores, they decided to expand them to all their fireworks stores in the US.

B&N pitches the Nook Color as an ereader, but underneath the locked down exterior lies a moderately capable Android tablet with a single core 1GHz CPU, 7″ screen, 8GB storage, and Wifi. In this case, the 300 NC used on the show floor where first hacked to run Cyanogen Mod, the open source Android firmware. The videos were customized to fit the Nook Color

This isn’t the first time I’ve heard of a commercial use for an ereader. I remember a similar story from way back when the eBookwise-1150 was still on the market. A newspaper distributor used these underpowered ereaders as dashboard mounted nav tools. They showed route data, titles to be dropped off at each stop, and other useful info.

Note that this dates from 2007, back when tablets were still expensive. The eBookwise cost around a hundred dollars each, making it a lot cheaper than the thousand plus dollar tablets that might have been considered as an alternative.

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