Putting Ember in Display Mode

Do you have a fancy trade show to take Ember to? Do you want purple, green, and orange all in the same photo? Then this Instructable is for you! EDIT: If you have Mac or Linux and just want to run a script, skip to the last step!

Obtain a 1200x800 all white image. You can make your own or download the one above. (Image cred: Rick Greene)

On Mac OSX or most Linux distros you wont need any extra software for Windows you'll need something like pscp. First, we're going to put the image on the Ember using something called Secure File Transfer Protocol (sftp). First connect to Ember over USB (you may need drivers from here).

On Mac or Linux:

1. Open the Terminal application.
2. In the terminal type sftp root@192.168.7.2 then press Enter
3. If it asks about verifying authenticity type yes then press Enter
4. A new prompt will come up sftp>.
5. Type put /PATH/TO/WHITEIMAGE /var/smith/white.png where /PATH/TO/WHITEIMAGE is the absolute file path of your image so for example put /Users/cappie/Downloads/AllWhite.png /var/smith/white.png then press Enter. Make sure there's a space after put and between the two file names!
6. Press Ctrl+d to exit the sftp session.

On Windows:

1. Download the PuTTY pscp app here.
2. Open a command prompt and type. \PATH\TO\PSCP\pscp \PATH\TO\WHITEIMAGE root@192.168.7.2:/var/smith/white.png where \PATH\TO\PSCP is the absolute path to the pscp program and \PATH\TO\WHITEIMAGE is the absolute path of the image. So for example c:\users\cappie\Downloads\pscp c:\users\cappie\Downloads\AllWhite.png root@192.168.7.2:/var/smith/white.png. Then press Enter.
3. You can close the session once the file transfers.

Now that we have the image on Ember we're going to move it to the correct spot using a Secure SHell (ssh) and Ember's own command interface. We're going to replace Ember's built in diagnostic test image because we don't want diagnostics, we want pretty. On Windows you will again need additional software this one is called PuTTY. With Ember connected via USB cable:

On Mac or Linux:

1. Open or use an existing Teriminal.
2. Type ssh root@192.168.7.2 press Enter. A prompt may appear asking you to verify authenticity if it does type yes.** Press Enter.
3. A new prompt should appear root@ember:~# from here type mv /var/smith/TestPattern.png /var/smith/TestPattern.png.old Press Enter. This just moves the diagnostic image out of the way.
4. Now type cp /var/smith/white.png /var/smith/TestPattern.png Press Enter. This copies the white image to the location where Ember looks for its test pattern.
5. With the image in place all you have to do is type echo test > /tmp/CommandPipe Press Enter. This tells Ember to display its test image which is now the white image. Voila your Ember is in sweet sweet display mode you can press Ctrl+d to end the session and unplug your computer.
   

On Windows:

1. Download PuTTY
2. Start putty and enter 192.168.7.2 in the 'Host Name' box, SSH in the 'Protocol' box, and make sure the 'Port' box says 22. Click the 'Open' button.
3. A prompt will greet you with a login. The username is root and there is no password just press Enter to continue. If you are asked about a host key press OK.
4. Continue from Step 3 in the Mac instructions.

**If you are told the authenticity of this host cannot be verified or similar and it wont let you connect to your Ember you need to remove the conflicting fingerprint inside the file .ssh/known_hosts if you only use ssh for Ember you can remove the entire file and another one will be automatically generated. This should only be an issue if you are using multiple Embers or using 192.168.7.2 as the host for some other system.

I've created a script that will do both steps 1 and 2 for you without. You just need to be connected to the internet so that the script can download the file. Unfortunately, my script will only work on Macs and Linux computers if you know how to make one for Windows let me know! I've attached both the shell script and a zip file of a Mac .app. For the .app just download and uncompress the zip file, connect to an Ember over USB, then double click on the application. To use the shell script first make it executable then run it from a terminal like so

chmod +x /path/to/displayMode.sh

/path/to/displayMode.sh<br>