Topic: Offline firmware documentation info depository

Ok, I think I have most of it figured out. Let me go through this to make sure I have it so far....
Download Zurks firmware onto a usb drive.
Somehow acquire your profile information. Can this be done with winscp and copied locally off the chumby? or does it have to be downloaded with wget? If so, how can I stop the putty log from truncating the URL?
After you get your profile info, it has to "match" the one on the usb drive. In what way? Do you mean make the chumby.com references redirect to the local usb widget directory? If so, is that all that needs to change?
Then run putty, enable the log,  and do the stop/start control panel command. After ALL the widgets have cycled, exit and load the putty log file into notepad and run a find command for anything starting with http. Some of this at the beginning seem useless, but the ones during the widget cylcing need to be saved one by one by cutting the URL and using wget to grab them from chumby.com.   (The title of the widget you are saving is listed a few lines after the url in the log)
This is where my headache starts to become painful.
So I have to put the wget downloaded files somewhere (in the www folder?), and a profile I can't find somewhere, and it should work, right? Where do they go? Do they completely replace existing files? Is the profile the file located at \lighty\html\xapis\profile\show? Or is that a list of what is displayed?
What about widgets that require input originally, like imageurl or weather widgets. Where do I add zip code info? Or are all these type of things now inoperative?


I hope this isn't too much to ask, for us newbies it blows our minds, you guys make it look easy. I haven't done stuff like this since the Commodore Amiga days.  I have learned a LOT in a week (p.s. Thanks!), but I'm not quite there yet. As soon as it clicks in my head, and I can get it working, I'll make a chumby guide that should help anyone.

Re: Offline firmware documentation info depository

1. you acquire your profile info by running the commands on the chumby :
stop_control_panel
start_control_panel
you should see a long list of URLs. one of them is your profile. download it with any web browser. you dont need the full url, even the truncated one will work.
2. yep. replace chumby.com with file:// as shown in the offline profile. thats all that needs to change. make a copy of the urls you replace in notepad or wherever and download those one by one with wget and place them in the /www directory of the offline firmware.
3. for a chumby8 it is located at \lighty\html\xapis\profile\show for a chumby1 it is at /www/xml/profile
4. zip code info goes in the profile file in the parameters section below each widget. if you have downloaded a profile which belongs to you the code should be correct automatically since its taken from your chumby account.

Re: Offline firmware documentation info depository

Is the profile info the url that looks like this: http://www.chumby.com/xapis/profile/show/(a bunch of numbers)?oauth_signature=(more numbers)f&oauth_signature_method=MD5-HEX&oauth_nonce=(even more)&oauth_consumer_key=(8 digits)  ?  If so, it gives me an error of "not authorized" either with firefox or wget.

Re: Offline firmware documentation info depository

yep. you have to make sure the online control panel is running while you download with firefox.
i.e. when you do a start_control_panel make sure it keeps running while you download the url.

Re: Offline firmware documentation info depository

One last thing (for now)...

For multiple instances of the same widget (example: I have imageurl several times to display various things) I only have to add it once to the www folder, but it needs to appear in the profile list multiple times with different parameters, right?


Oh, and can the offline firmware play music? I know pandora is probably out, maybe from the sd card?

Re: Offline firmware documentation info depository

yep. but with the same id.
the offline firmware uses multiple examples of widgets repeatedly. you can look at it for reference.
yep it can play music including pandora as it does not block the pandora chumby server and has included public domain music in the /music directory.

Re: Offline firmware documentation info depository

Still no profile, I tried stop/start control panel and while it was running I entered the url in firefox and it says

This XML file does not appear to have any style information associated with it. The document tree is shown below.
      <error>
<unauthorized/>
     </error>

I also tried different parts of the url, no good.

Is there an alternate method? Or am I doing it wrong? Any idea where it resides on the chumby itself? I can get it with winscp if I know what its called.

Re: Offline firmware documentation info depository

the url changes everytime you run control panel. make sure you get the most current one.
use putty to log stuff on windows and look at the log file separately in notepad or something while its running.

Re: Offline firmware documentation info depository

Ok. Got it. I'll work on it through the week and debug everything, maybe have a rough draft on a a manual by the weekend.
Thanks for all the help, it is greatly appreciated!


Fin

10 (edited by zurk 2012-05-01 12:56:58)

Re: Offline firmware documentation info depository

release it under a creative commons license or something and i can include it in the next firmware release if you want to.
also make sure you have version numbers for it so we can keep track of changes etc.
and these notes might be helpful : http://lady-of-lothlorien.com/chumby/zu … notes.html

Re: Offline firmware documentation info depository

In my case, profile download works with this simple url:
http://xml.chumby.com/xml/profiles?id=[user_id]&chumby_id=[device_id]

Unfortunately while the device_id con be found on both the control panel and chumby web site, the user_id seems to be available only through start_control_panel command only.

Re: Offline firmware documentation info depository

Just a progress note:  still working on an instruction book, I have a few pages completed, but it may take a little longer than I thought, as no one in my house will shut up long enough for me to work on it.

Re: Offline firmware documentation info depository

I have completed a step by step manual on loading your widgets   and profile into the Zurk firmware. Any suggestions on how to try it out or distribute it? If I post a link to it here then its out there for good.I would really like a second pair of eyes look it over before it goes out.

14

Re: Offline firmware documentation info depository

amigafin wrote:

I have completed a step by step manual on loading your widgets   and profile into the Zurk firmware. Any suggestions on how to try it out or distribute it? If I post a link to it here then its out there for good.I would really like a second pair of eyes look it over before it goes out.

I sent you a forum email with my address, I can take a look at it.  You can use Dropbox, Google Docs, or Microsft Skydrive to distribute the document.

Re: Offline firmware documentation info depository

Once it has been vetted maybe Zurk could add it to his sourceforge page?

Tar, feathers, congress. Some assembly required.

Re: Offline firmware documentation info depository

Yeah, I think you need to run it by Zurk. He mentioned he made some changes in v11 you might need to note for your instructions, if you wrote them a while back.

http://forum.chumby.com/viewtopic.php?pid=42473#p42473

zurk wrote:

yup. the architecture has changed. no more xml folder under www.
profile is now as indicated on the readme.txt file under lighty/html for both c1 and c8.

Re: Offline firmware documentation info depository

I will edit it and upload it tomorrow

Re: Offline firmware documentation info depository

Nevermind ,  I just finished it.  It can be found here :
https://sourceforge.net/projects/chumby … F/download

Let me know of any bugs I need to fix.

19 (edited by bobsz 2012-05-06 18:21:34)

Re: Offline firmware documentation info depository

I just took a quick look. Format is very nice, east to follow. First, it's good you make clear it's on a C8. Maybe also note in the beginning you're using XP, just because some of the computer screen shots may look different. Unfortunately, I'm not great at this tech-wise, maybe drop the link on a couple of other threads to ask tech folks to look.

Maybe explain what it takes to make a widget work. ie, the "instructions" that make them work are in the profile, but the actual widget parts is those files you download from wget. For each widget, there can be a few of these files, including the the real "swf" widget/movie files, and a (jpeg) thumbnail file, etc. (None of the file types will be evident from looking.) The files can be from a few kb to a ~200 kb.The name of each file will look something like this:

080F3368-342B-11DD-B52C-001E681DF646

To SSH into a Chumby 1, you press "settings" then "chumby info" and then you'll see the same pi in the upper right. Unfortunately, I'm not using v12 yet so can't comment on what's what in there.

FYI, if people flip out over wget (like me) there's one with a graphical interface called VisualWget. Also, if you have trouble editing in wordpad, there's a free text editor called EditPad lite- just don't opt into any "extras" on these freewares, custom install if needed.

Trivia, but the "</widget_instance>" is actually the last part of the widget. It might be better to cut & paste the complete widget including that. "<widet_instance>" is the start of each one. Most elements start with something like "<this>" and close with something like "</this>". Be careful cutting and pasting because even an extra ">" will break things.

Hopefully you'll get a lot of reviewers. Let me know if you need any more specific differences for the C1. Sounds like with firmware v12, most things are the same now. I also think I do things like manage my profiles differently, so let us all know if you need a "plan b" for any step. But, I think a simple approach, like you're trying is best. I'll re-read your manual again and (try) to look for things like the typos you mentioned!

Re: Offline firmware documentation info depository

Also with v14.0 you can now customize music sources just as easily as you customize widgets.
Add podcasts, music sources, etc by editing text files.

Re: Offline firmware documentation info depository

Ok, cool. I will wait a little while to do an update, as the firmware is changing quicker than I can crank out the guide. For now it at least gives a general overview on what to do, most of which I have just learned over the last couple weeks. But I'll start working on the bugs and corrections.

On the widget parts subject, where and what is the purpose of the thumbnail? I think I may have only downloaded the swf. Is the thumbnail what displays on the screen when you hit the button to do a manual widget selection? I didn't see any other downloadable files in my putty log....I'll have to go look at it again....

Re: Offline firmware documentation info depository

For my own convenience, I wrote a small java program that takes a profile (either as a file or as a link), downloads all the files (widgets, thumbnails, templates and widget instances) and fixes the href references for use with the offline firmware. It runs on a host pc and generated files must be copied to the usb key hosting the fw.
If anyone is interested I can make it public, but I only tested on my own chumby one.

Re: Offline firmware documentation info depository

Nevermind, I figured it out. You have to download the urls found in  the profile. Ok.

Re: Offline firmware documentation info depository

Latest version has been uploaded. I streamlined it a little, fixed some stuff.

Re: Offline firmware documentation info depository

Please make it public, it will greatly simplify the task of adding widgets we choose to Zurk's offline firmware.

Thanks,

CF

francesco wrote:

For my own convenience, I wrote a small java program that takes a profile (either as a file or as a link), downloads all the files (widgets, thumbnails, templates and widget instances) and fixes the href references for use with the offline firmware. It runs on a host pc and generated files must be copied to the usb key hosting the fw.
If anyone is interested I can make it public, but I only tested on my own chumby one.