1 (edited by tylerfixer 2011-04-23 16:57:04)

Topic: Running Chumby8 ControlPanel on the Infocast 8" - UPDATED

Hello everyone!

Last year, I bought an Infocast 8" for my room to replace my alarm clock, and serve as a media display during the daytime.
I also bought an Infocast 3.5", and imagine my surprise when I was unable to set new alarms on the 8" rather than just the built-in quick alarm.
That didn't stop me, I just manually made a /psp/alarms file with my nightmode information and that was that.

Recently, however, I've had quite the fluid schedule and have needed different alarms at different days... and the Chumby8 just came out smile

So, what did I do? Loaded the excellent new Chumby8 controlpanel on my Infocast... and here's how:

UPDATE!
Easier method... scroll down, or click here -> http://forum.chumby.com/viewtopic.php?pid=36667#p36667

  1. Go here: http://www.chumby.com/xml/controlpanel?hw=9.9 and download the .tar.gz file mentioned in the XML.

  2. SSH into your Infocast 8" and run "stop_control_panel"

  3. Rename the old /tmp/controlpanel.swf to something else, just in case... "mv /tmp/controlpanel.swf /tmp/controlpanel_orig.swf"

  4. SCP the new controlpanel.swf from that .tar.gz you downloaded earlier to /tmp

  5. Run "start_control_panel" on your Infocast

With all of that said and done, you should be staring at a lovely brand new controlpanel from the Chumby8.
Your Infocast will not show the new Chumby8 widgets, since we have not modified the values that are sent back to the Chumby servers when requesting compatible widgets...

I'm going to figure out the details of using the /psp files to tell the Infocast on boot to get the new controlpanel, but for now this is the least risky way since I would worry about accidentally having the Infocast flash the Chumby8 firmware and find out that it's totally incompatible.

This mod goes away after each reboot of the Infocast, so you'd have to follow it all again if you power off your device.

Special thanks to the Chumby team for making an excellent device-- I plan on getting a Chumby8 as soon as I can afford one (they make excellent intercoms/webcam servers/media displays).

Demo Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzY6ytQIQCc

EDIT-- The BBCode parser on this board is bork'd.. nesting a [ code] tag inside of a bullet point removes the code tag

Re: Running Chumby8 ControlPanel on the Infocast 8" - UPDATED

Works perfectly!

As long as you don't reboot, perfect

One question.  The ssh window I did the start_control_panel on must stay open for it to work..

I tried 'start_control_panel &', but everything exitted with error 1 until I rebooted

Re: Running Chumby8 ControlPanel on the Infocast 8" - UPDATED

philhu wrote:

Works perfectly!

As long as you don't reboot, perfect

One question.  The ssh window I did the start_control_panel on must stay open for it to work..

I tried 'start_control_panel &', but everything exitted with error 1 until I rebooted

Ah, just issue "start_control_panel" then wait for it to come up.. it'll start the watchdog, then you can exit the ssh window... after approx 30 seconds, the controlpanel will restart.

I'm working on a debugchumby style script to automate all this via a usb stick for those uncomfortable with SSH and etc.

Re: Running Chumby8 ControlPanel on the Infocast 8" - UPDATED

Should be interesting to try, but I really want to swap out everything making my Infocast 8 a Chumby 8. No time and questionable skills will leave this on the "to do" list.

Tar, feathers, congress. Some assembly required.

5 (edited by philhu 2011-04-14 07:52:16)

Re: Running Chumby8 ControlPanel on the Infocast 8" - UPDATED

BoloMKXXVIII wrote:

Should be interesting to try, but I really want to swap out everything making my Infocast 8 a Chumby 8. No time and questionable skills will leave this on the "to do" list.

Ditto, making the infocast a chumby8, since I think the hw is identical, would be my plan, but I too cannot do that level of work, never did firmware changes, etc.

I did some reading of the hack pages, and running a script during bootup, or login should be relatively easy if you can find a place to put the controlpanel.swf file that is saved between boots, like /pcs?

Re: Running Chumby8 ControlPanel on the Infocast 8" - UPDATED

I'm looking into changing the controlpanel version that is downloaded on startup...
Thus far, it looks like /usr/scripts/chumby/start_control_panel calls /usr/scripts/chumby/download_cp, and download_cp has hooks to spoof the fw and sw versions, but not one to spoof the hardware version, since that is pulled directly from the crypto processor.

I'd like to figure out the most elegant solution rather than modifying the "download_cp" script, so I'm looking into using a debugchumby style init hook in /psp.

I may just end up making a script that modifies the "download_cp" script and adds a place to spoof the hw version by a file in /psp, but I don't want to be making modifications to files that are normally read-only...

Re: Running Chumby8 ControlPanel on the Infocast 8" - UPDATED

First, kudos for caring enough, and figuring this out.  The C8 control panel is prettier and less clumsy, for sure.

tylerfixer wrote:

I may just end up making a script that modifies the "download_cp" script and adds a place to spoof the hw version by a file in /psp, but I don't want to be making modifications to files that are normally read-only...

Don't want to overwrite a read-only file?  Uh, then you could LD_PRELOAD on write() and read(), catch accesses to /dev/ttyS2 with !!!!HWVR and... haha just kidding.

Instead, perhaps alter the PATH at the top of /psp/.profile (to have yours first) or just directly alias your 'chumby_version' to a spoofer wrapper for the -h case?


But what does the new control panel bring us?  It breaks my two remaining uses for my Infocast: Pandora and as a clock (night mode.)  As soon as I idle in Pandora, it takes me away to some channel and I lose the album covers.  And since I regularly lose network access, now I awake to see I lost network access (surprise) instead of the time.  (If you know how to disable either of these regressions, I'm keen to hear...)

Is the new CP anything more than a face lift, and potentially a browser for the rare app that lets us link out?  I must confess I kinda stopped using apps, and the browser on my phone is much faster and more usable...

Re: Running Chumby8 ControlPanel on the Infocast 8" - UPDATED

stephan wrote:

First, kudos for caring enough, and figuring this out.  The C8 control panel is prettier and less clumsy, for sure.

tylerfixer wrote:

I may just end up making a script that modifies the "download_cp" script and adds a place to spoof the hw version by a file in /psp, but I don't want to be making modifications to files that are normally read-only...

Don't want to overwrite a read-only file?  Uh, then you could LD_PRELOAD on write() and read(), catch accesses to /dev/ttyS2 with !!!!HWVR and... haha just kidding.

Instead, perhaps alter the PATH at the top of /psp/.profile (to have yours first) or just directly alias your 'chumby_version' to a spoofer wrapper for the -h case?


But what does the new control panel bring us?  It breaks my two remaining uses for my Infocast: Pandora and as a clock (night mode.)  As soon as I idle in Pandora, it takes me away to some channel and I lose the album covers.  And since I regularly lose network access, now I awake to see I lost network access (surprise) instead of the time.  (If you know how to disable either of these regressions, I'm keen to hear...)

Is the new CP anything more than a face lift, and potentially a browser for the rare app that lets us link out?  I must confess I kinda stopped using apps, and the browser on my phone is much faster and more usable...

The new CP brings a few needed features, namely a new alarm scheduler. As for the idle in Pandora, I believe it's a setting that you can change (something like "idle time before automatic channel start").

For the internet connectivity dialogue box, I think that will be fixed on Chumby's end soon, as coming out of night mode to present a dialogue box seems like a possible bug in the CP itself.

I think I may have figured out the most elegant method of spoofing the hardware version, but I want to make sure it's 100% foolproof before I release it.
My thought is to not spoof anything at all, but rather just change the CP download URL instead in the "download_cp" script, since spoofing the hw version by changing the "chumby_version" script could lead to other unintended side effects (like accidentally upgrading to an incompatible firmware image).

After I get this all up and working I'm going to sit down and learn Flash. I need me some widgets smile

Re: Running Chumby8 ControlPanel on the Infocast 8" - UPDATED

Works well Tylerfixer!  Thank-you for the post.

I've been using the user hook to autostart stuff in /mnt/storage/psp/rfs1.

Seems to work for me loading a python script, setting the time (RDATE), mapping drives and running an XPL hub for automation.

Re: Running Chumby8 ControlPanel on the Infocast 8" - UPDATED

I've been seeing some problems with alarms/tasks with the chumby8 cp on an infocast, that do not show on a real chumby8

Please see my posts in the software section.

Re: Running Chumby8 ControlPanel on the Infocast 8" - UPDATED

@philhu
Just responded to your question in your other thread.

@everyone else:
My quick script is almost done. Should be as easy as plugging in a USB drive if you want to avoid SSHing into your Infocast8.

Re: Running Chumby8 ControlPanel on the Infocast 8" - UPDATED

tylerfixer, any news on your script?

Re: Running Chumby8 ControlPanel on the Infocast 8" - UPDATED

FYI - you can bind mount an individual file to replace a file on a read only file system:

mount --bind /mnt/storage/download_cp  /usr/chumby/scripts/download_cp

Re: Running Chumby8 ControlPanel on the Infocast 8" - UPDATED

Well, it's done!

Download the link below, unzip it to your memory stick in the root (you should end up with something like E:\debugchumby).

Reboot your Infocast8 with your memory stick plugged in, and you should see the normal boot sequence interrupted by a "Updating Software" image, then a blank screen, then the "Downloading Control Panel" screen and finally the Chumby8 interface.

This script adds a new hook to the download_cp script-- on boot your Infocast will now check for /psp/cp_hardware_ver. If that file exists, it will use its contents rather than checking the actual hardware version.

Please note, however, this does not spoof the hardware version to the widgets. I am afraid that if I spoofed the hardware version at a lower level, there is a possibility that the system could accidentally download and flash incorrect software (like accidentally flashing the Chumby8 firmware to the Infocast8, and I'm not sure how that'd go...)

To revert, just ssh in and issue "rm /psp/cp_hardware_ver".

This will NOT work on any other device besides the Insignia Infocast 8"!
Do not try this on any other device!

If you're not comfortable with the possibility of having to ssh in and fix your device if something goes wrong, don't use this script-- it modifies essential system files and if it doesn't work, you could be stuck having to reflash your Infocast.

With that said, here's the download link...
http://thecubed.com/chumby/i8-to-c8mod.zip

Good luck!

Re: Running Chumby8 ControlPanel on the Infocast 8" - UPDATED

tylerfixer,

Great work. Works perfectly on my Infocast 8". Hopefully, we'll get an answer soon, on whether or not it is safe to identify the hardware as a true Chumby 8.

Re: Running Chumby8 ControlPanel on the Infocast 8" - UPDATED

I'm not sure how well that'll work- since it looks like most of the hardware version identification used comes from the crypto processor. I may be able to get C8 full OS running, but the issue may remain that apps may ask the crypto processor directly for the version information...

I suppose i should check to see if I can just change the crypto processor binary to a shell script that just returns the values I want...

Lots of methods for accomplishing the same thing, I suppose smile

17

Re: Running Chumby8 ControlPanel on the Infocast 8" - UPDATED

Works great.   Thanks much.   One caveat with C8 going from the infocast version.   You lose the ability to stream stuff from a media server when you do this.    Still a net positive since the interface isn't brain-dead like the stock version (still can't believe it doesn't deal with playlists though).

Re: Running Chumby8 ControlPanel on the Infocast 8" - UPDATED

rmf wrote:

Works great.   Thanks much.   One caveat with C8 going from the infocast version.   You lose the ability to stream stuff from a media server when you do this.    Still a net positive since the interface isn't brain-dead like the stock version (still can't believe it doesn't deal with playlists though).

Just noticed that... hmm, it might get added to the C8 controlpanel soon, somehow I think that's a function that the Chumby team may be working on bringing to the C8 shortly...

Another weird (cp-related) thing I've been noticing is that my device will come out of night mode to tell me it's lost connection in the middle of the night. Ugh. Oh well! I suppose the Chumby team will fix that in an official update for the C8.

In the meantime, I really need to re-learn Flash. Got an idea for a clock+email+calendar widget to be a permanent resident on my Infocast's display (essentially replacing the controlpanel with a simple widget that functions as a clock, alarm clock, night mode, email notifier, and upcoming events calendar widget).

Shouldn't be that hard smile

Re: Running Chumby8 ControlPanel on the Infocast 8" - UPDATED

Nice script there tylerfixer!

Re: Running Chumby8 ControlPanel on the Infocast 8" - UPDATED

Thanks smile

Writing this script I re-realized one thing: busybox sucks (specifically the patch applet...).

I wonder if I should make a hook for usb autorun scripts-- something akin to debugchumby, but without the requirement of a restart for the script to be activated first... hmm...

Re: Running Chumby8 ControlPanel on the Infocast 8" - UPDATED

This really is cool!

1 Problem I notice that I am not quite sure how to fix: On my infocast 8 I can't seem to get it to see the internal memory. When I click on videos or music I don't see the internal 2GB card. I just see USB1 USB2, SD Card, and CF Card. This is probably due to the fact that the chumby 8 doesn't have an internal 2gb card. This in 1 aspect is definitely 1 way the chumby 8 is different from the infocast 8 in terms of HW. However I was hoping you might know of a way to fix this, maby by tricking the infocast 8 into thinking the internal card is something else such as a cf card, but I really don't know.... anyway aside from this minor problem, the script you wrote really is amazing!

Re: Running Chumby8 ControlPanel on the Infocast 8" - UPDATED

Hm, somehow I'm sure the C8 has an internal 2gb card since the Infocast and the C8 share similar hardware specifications.
There's a possibility this is a feature that is in-progress to bring to the C8.

Perhaps we need a flash widget just for managing media on the device... any flash devs out there?

Re: Running Chumby8 ControlPanel on the Infocast 8" - UPDATED

Yes, the Chumby people said a few features were missing on release and they were working on them.

I see the same network problem, annoying since it must come back as the flash apps keep running in the backgriound behine the message.  If it was night mode, it comes out and runs apps.  Pretty annoying.

Re: Running Chumby8 ControlPanel on the Infocast 8" - UPDATED

Please ensure that you are running CP 5.0.29 (reboot your c8 device if necessary) before reporting any additional unpleasantries regarding the 'lost network connection' popup dialog.  We addressed some of the most common issues and released the latest CP just before the weekend.  Any remaining issues are preferably reported with the CP version and software version alongside.  Thanks!

25 (edited by pete_c 2011-04-25 14:18:44)

Re: Running Chumby8 ControlPanel on the Infocast 8" - UPDATED

A few months back rebuilt the microSD card migrating all of it to a 4Gb SD card.  (IE: just copied first three partitions to a new 4GB; leaving the 4th partition to be created when the Infocast 8" boots).

I ended up just running the script and it worked fine.  Initially I just renamed it to one of the hookfiles but couldn't get it to run.  (IE: /mnt/storage/psp/rfs1/userhook2).  I have other things starting with the first two userhook files just fine.

I can warm boot and cold boot and the new CP comes up fine without an external USB memory stick.