Friday, December 28, 2007

Enable Remote Display Application - CERDisp

The "Remote Display Application" or CERDisp is a Windows CE functionality that gives you the possibility to see remotely the content of the Frame Buffer of your device, and to interact with it through the mouse and keyboard. This tool is composed of two part, a client and a server.

The server :
CERHost is the host part of this tool, and must be launched on your computer before the client. This tools will wait for client connections.
The application can be found in the following folder :
C:\WINCE600\PUBLIC\COMMON\OAK\BIN\I386



The Client :
CERDisp is the Windows CE client and must be integrated inside your Windows CE binary image, by selecting the "Remote Display Application" component in your OSDesign. The client will connect to a dedicated server, for which the settings are stored in the registry. Add the following registry settings to your Project.reg file to setup CERDisp.
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\CERDISP]
"Hostname"="nameoftheserver"

The Hostname is the name or the IP address of the server. Use ppp_peer the as Hostname if you want ot use CERDisp throught an ActiveSync connection.

Tip to use this tool :
As you have to launch CERDisp on your device, you need an access to your device through a command prompt. That's why in that case I suggest you to enable a Telnet server to have a network access to your device and be able to launch the client.
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\COMM\TELNETD]
"IsEnabled "=dword:1
"UseAuthentication"=dword:0
The above settings are enabling the telnet server and removing the authentication. So you may have network security risk to use those settings AS IS on your device.

Launch CERDisp :
Before launching CERDisp, you have to launch CERHost on your computer. To launch CERDisp you have to use the following command line :
Cerdisp –c
The -c parameter is used to specify that the application have to connect.


Note : Do not store any registry settings about the host if you do not have a specific dedicated host. You may be able to select your device in a list under CERHost (File -> Connect).

- Nicolas

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Probably you take a look at My Mobiler by MTUX. It is for free and even more user friendly than the CERDisp. It supports automatic changes from portrait mode to landscape mode and vice versa. As the software automatically communicates with the device, there is no need for configuring the host on Windows Mobile - it just works. Additionally you can copy files directly via drag and drop from/to the device. As well you can take directly screenshots from your PDA.
For installation on your device you just have to plug in your device via ActiveSync or WMDC abd that's it. All is done (again) automatically.

You can get the software here:http://www.mymobiler.com/

Nicolas BESSON [MVP] said...

Glad to see that you have a CERdisp like application for Windows Mobile. It could be interesting for firmware developers to have a version compatible with Windows CE, and an easy way to integrate your application in a Windows CE binary image.

Jason said...

I tried to remotely control my prototype running window CE 6.0, it succeeded with Ethernet connection, but it failed with Active Async connection. Anything else need to add in the OS design? Thanks

Sandeep Bhat said...

5 years since you posted this. It was a life saver. Thanks a ton.

Deepak said...

I know this is a very old post but couldn't finda better thread to ask my doubt :(

Does the CERDisp availabel in newer WinCE7.0 version also ?

Nicolas BESSON [MVP] said...

This article is still valid for WinCE 7 WEC7. The tool is probaly not located in the same folders but have the same name. A quick search on you hard disk might help you a lot :-)