First things first. You have to get yourself a Chumby device. The device I ended up working with is the Insignia Infocast 8″ The first question you will have is how do I get my swf up on the device for actual testing. It really is not all that straight forward. The best place to start is the Chumby Developer Wiki. From here you can find the various things you can do on the different Chumby devices.
Initially I started trying to test on the device with Flash Lite 4, only to find out it was not supported. This is the initial output I received.
Adobe FlashLite 3.1.7 Release (Version 9,1,122,0)- Chumby Industries (version 9 build 107-3548 [GCC 4.3.2])
Portions copyright (C) 2005-2010 Chumby Industries, Inc.
Built for: silvermoon; Features: Video ALSA ARM-optimizations
Build time: Thu 09Dec2010 1318
2011-01-23 11:49:29 HTTPCurlObject::Done(id=1) returning true due to error condition, response code=404
2011-01-23 11:49:29 ClientObject::OpenSWFFile(): cannot open swf file http://10.0.1.14/greader/greader.swf
2011-01-23 11:49:29 ChumbyVidStats::RuntimeCleanup(): 0 sessions started, 0 cancelled, originating pid=23838, last reporting pid=0
2011-01-23 11:49:30 err[1]: 2011-01-23 11:49:29 HTTPCurlObject::Done(id=1) returning true due to error condition, response code=404
2011-01-23 11:49:30 err[2]: 2011-01-23 11:49:29 ClientObject::OpenSWFFile(): cannot open swf file http://10.0.1.14/greader/greader.swf
2011-01-23 11:49:30 Exiting _chumby_flashplayer_version=317.9.00107-3548
2011-01-23 11:49:30 Start time: 2011-01-23 11:49:29
2011-01-23 11:49:30 End time : 2011-01-23 11:49:30
2011-01-23 11:49:30 Elapsed : 1s (1)
2011-01-23 11:49:30 main() - closing and deleting pid file /var/run/chumbyflashplayer.pid
2011-01-23 11:49:30 chumbyflashplayer main() - exiting, return code -1
Now my initial reaction to this not working was a big WTF. So I started looking through the output and the one line that stuck out like a sore thumb was:
Adobe FlashLite 3.1.7 Release (Version 9,1,122,0
So from there I started to frantically google trying to figure out how to get this thing running Flash Lite 4, and I ended up on the developer wiki, and the rest of the steps I took are laid out below.
The first thing you need to do is follow the instructions to install the latest developer firmware. The firmware itself can be downloaded here. Once you have the firmware downloaded, you need to put it on an empty usb drive. I’m on a mac and formatted it to MS-DOS using disk utility. I have no idea if this is necessary, but at least worth mentioning. After you put the zip file for the firmware on the drive, plug it into the back of the device. With you fingernail on the screen restart the device and you will be able to choose to load up the firmware from the USB drive, and the actual install from there is pretty straight forward.
Once the firmware is installed the device will reboot, and you will have to go through all the configuration. After this is complete you need to enable ssh. Tap on the Apps category. Tap on the Insignia logo. Near the upper right of that popup window there is a pi symbol. Tap on the pi symbol. From this window there are a few different options that can be enabled. The one we care about is SSHD. Tap on SSHD. Also note the devices IP which is found near the top of the window below the ID.
With SSH now enabled we are totally ready to rock.
The following instructions are for if you don’t already have a web server running. Skip ahead if you do already. The instructions are for Mac only, sorry PC people.
Open up system preferences, and click on “Sharing.” Make sure you have enabled Web Sharing, and note the path to your “personal website,” it will be something like http://10.0.1.14/~username/ This url is pointing to a directory in your home directory called Sites. You should be publishing your swf out to any place within Sites.
So, you now have a web server running. Lets continue on. At this point you need to open up terminal, and SSH into your device. You will be logging in as root, and there is no password. Type this in:
ssh 10.0.1.11 -l root
Keep in mind that the IP of your device may be different, and you should have noted it back when we were in the configuration panel.
Once you are logged into the device, you need to call the command: stop_control_panel
At this point the device will sit there with a black screen waiting. You then call:
chumbyflashplayer.x -i http://the.path.to.your.swf
An example of the path would be something like http://10.0.1.14/~jordan/project/project.swf
At this point you should now see your swf up and running on the display of the device.
The flash project I used was an AS3 project, with Flash Lite 4 as my target player under publish settings.
To stop the process just press CTRL-C, and you can then just execute the chumbyflashplayer.x command again.
