Topic: Chumby 8 can be hazardous to your health!

I've had my red C8 in my son's room since just after he was born a little over two years ago.  The clock has been a welcome companion during the long nights with him and we use it often to play music to help him sleep.  He loves some of the gentle animations that he sees during the day too.

Unfortunately, it got banished last night.  He was already a bit agitated due to an ear infection, and I had him standing up on the changing table.  The C8 started rebooting, something that happens every couple of days in my experience.  However, he happened to be watching it at the time, and as soon as the Blue Octy animation came on, my son got incredibly frightened.  So frightened that he grabbed on to me tight and bit down on my shoulder!  Fortunately, the bite didn't break the surface, but it did leave a bruise.

This morning, he was still asking about the octopus in a very worried fashion.  It made me very sad to think that one of my favorite gadgets frightened him so.

So... any hack to the startup files to bypass the animation?  I think I'll just swap in the Infocast 8 instead after a few days of absence and see how that goes, since it doesn't show any animations when starting.

Re: Chumby 8 can be hazardous to your health!

If your kid isn't spooked by the Insignia's boot animation, just download it from here, rename the file to "opening.swf", stick it on a flash drive, and plug it into the Chumby.

Re: Chumby 8 can be hazardous to your health!

Yes - there should be a hack for this.

Create a new Flash movie with whatever you want, then on the last frame of the animation, add the following Actionscript code:

_putFile = ASnative(5, 51);
_putFile("/tmp/opening_done","1");

This tells the OS that the animation is complete and the movie can be killed.  It may not be killed at that time, because the OS may not be ready yet.

Export this movie as "opening.swf" - it should work on both /psp and /mnt/usb.

This is off the top of my head, so let me know if it doesn't work and I can investigate more

Re: Chumby 8 can be hazardous to your health!

Aww! I hope the poor little fellow is feeling better soon.
You just can never tell what scary things little ones will completely take in their stride, and what quite ordinary things will scare the pants off them.

Re: Chumby 8 can be hazardous to your health!

Is there something you think he might like instead?  Perhaps we can put it together for you.

Re: Chumby 8 can be hazardous to your health!

I ended up just swapping out my Infocast 8 for the Chumby 8.  The upside is that the touch screen is more responsive and there's no scary octopus, the downside is that it's not cheerful red.  So far, he seems to be happy with it.

Re: Chumby 8 can be hazardous to your health!

I think there is a class online you can take to have more sensitivity to Chumby8s. BluOcty is not a monster!
Seriously, there are upsides for either units. I like both. The I8 has more picture options and the sound seems slightly better--SRS. I like to do Photobucket on it. But C8 is a strong unit and has the Chumbrowser and a little more music options.

Owner of 3 Sony Dash, 2 Info 8.