It Worked for Me – Acer Iconia Tab A100

For a while I have wanted to integrate touch screen technology into one of my projects.  I had looked at a number of touch screens that could be integrated into a hardware project and then decided that maybe the way to go was to go with a tablet.

Based on what I had read about the ability to integrate Android and Arduino together I decided to look at an Android Tablet.  After installing the Android SDK and being impressed with what I saw and could do I was sold on going with Android.

I wanted something that was portable but had more screen real estate than a smart phone and as a result was looking for a 7” tablet.

I was looking at the recently released Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 and the Auraslate when I came across the Acer Iconia line of tablets.  I looked over the specifications and found a refurbished Tab A100 at Micro Center for $199.  I bought one last Thursday (4 days ago) and so far am very impressed.


I really like that the Acer Tablets have standard ports along with the proprietary connector.  I also like that it has an HDMI connector as well as USB.

The only things to watch out for that I have found are:

• The USB port is slave only and not slave/host. 
• As it runs on 12 volts it cannot be charged via USB and requires a separate power supply.
• It doesn’t seem to support hands free devices.

The A100 originally came with Honeycomb 3.2.1 but last night I was prompted to upgrade it and so it is now running Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0.3.

More to follow…

Tuesday, May 29th - It has been just about a month and I have done a good bit of programming, interfacing the Tab A100 via bluetooth to an Ardunio and via the ADK and a USB shield. So far I am still very happy with the Tab A100.