kenyee

You can use a coin cell battery as well if you disable the debugger section w/ the bright LED that sucks power :-)

FWIW, I can tell you that they mean it when they say the 2.2uF cap is the max you can put on.  I soldered on a 100uF one by mistake and it wouldn't boot at all :-P
 
If what you're doing works, it's probably fine.  My guess is power usage as well.  And a 4.7K resistor is a bad value to use too.  Soldered on that by mistake one time and it wouldn't boot either :-P
 
Yeah, I need to organize parts for soldering better :-)

FWIW, I don't think this project is hard.  You kids have it easy now...everything is easy to learn how to do by searching or watching youtube videos :-)
Go through the MSP430 tutorials so you can learn how to program it.  It's easy:
  http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/MSP430_LaunchPad_(MSP-EXP430G2)
 
Then buy an LCD display and look at the data sheet on how to program it or look for MSP430 LCD examples and buy the one they specify.
Mount a wheel w/ a hole and add a contact or hole or something to let you know when it has turned.
 
Go hack on it for a while and tell us where you get stuck.  You don't have classmates you can work with this on?

Bingo!  :-)
Specifically, the reset jumper.  I put the test jumper back in w/o problems.  Weird.
 
ok, so for battery use, connect it to the vcc/gnd/gnd (only one gnd has to be connected to the battery).
Pull off the vcc/reset jumpers in the block of jumpers in the emulation section.
 
It's now running happily off a cr2032...

That's because BLE (Bluetooth 4.0 Low Energy) support is pretty much non-existent on Android.  The only phones I know of that work are the Razr MAXX and the HTC OneX+, but when they go to Android 4.2, they won't work because Google rewrote the Bluetooth stack and none of the 3rd party BLE libraries work with the new stack.
BLE on Android is something you really want to stay away from for now...I'd say at least until Android 5.0 :-P