Create a custom splash screen

Introduction

Are you bored of the standard power on screen?
Do you want your own image at power up to personalize your device?
You can!

Save a 240x304 24-bit BMP file named splash.bmp in the root of the SD card, and it will be used as a starting up splash screen !

Beginning in firmware version 1.7.4, the splash screen BMP files stored on the SD card can be viewed in the File Manager application and set to be the current splash screen with a single click.

You can share and get ready to use images in the #splash-screens channel over our Discord group.

There is also https://ppsplash.creativo.hu/ where you can choose and download splash screens from a curated selection

You can of course use https://hackrf.app/ to upload them directly to SPLASH directory (firmware version >= 2.0.1 is needed)

⚠️ If your firmware is recent enough, it may support activation/deactivation of the splash screen via a checkbox in Settings/User Interface/Splash Screen. Don't forget to check it if the splash screen isn't displayed at startup ! ⚠️

Example

Tools / How-to

Use your favorite picture editor to adjust size, or use "convert" from ImageMagick, which is a powerful image manipulation tool. It is open source and available for all common operating systems.

To just scale the picture down, use:

$ convert source.jpg -resize 240x304 destination.bmp

If you see and don't want a frame left and right, you can adjust the convert with:

$ convert source.jpg -resize 240x304 -gravity center -extent 240x304 destination.bmp

To choose the filling color when resizing/extending the image, add '-background color' after 'source.jpg':

$ convert source.jpg -background "#000000" -resize 240x304 -gravity center -extent 240x304 destination.bmp

or

$ convert source.jpg -background black -resize 240x304 -gravity center -extent 240x304 destination.bmp

The list of predefined colors can be obtained with convert -list color

To check if the splash got the required parameter, check:

$ identify destination.bmp     
destination.bmp BMP3 240x300 240x304+0+0 8-bit sRGB 216054B 0.000u 0:00.000

If it is saying '8-bit', you're good. It's the number of bits by color components. For sRGB, 8+8+8 = 24-bit

Limitations

• image have to be a 24 bits bitmap
• width have to be exactly 240 pixels wide
• height have to be in the [ 1 , 304 ] range. Any additional lines will be cut