So, these were talked about before, but the thread went in all kinds of directions about various other things too.

So, heres a new thread to see if anyone else out there actually has one of these. Mine came in yesterday, and I've bought it to prototype out a use for them at work. The idea is to use them as build status devices, scattering several around the studio. The concept goes back to people using devices like the Orb, or X10 controlled lights to say when the build broke. The Orb developer network is still down, and the serial->ethernet route for the orb was looking more and more clunky with how much stuff would have to be added, so the Chumby came to mind.

My goal for mine is to put a widget on it that displays a solid color for at a glance build status. Then, if the touch screen is poked, it can change to display more details. Since they also have built in speakers, sounds could be played to alert people to a problem as well. If the prototype works out, work will probably buy several and I can then take mine home to find some other uses for it. Already, I like the idea of using it as an alarm clock, streaming internet radio as the main alarm without needing to have a computer running somewhere. All of my machines are happily sleeping at night when I sleep.

I bought an N800 and got involved in Maemo...

Have since written a gtk+ shopping list application and even helped pick the new community logo...

At £150 for a portable wifi enabled tablet that can run a full debian distro it was a good choice.

It also lasts for a few days idling on the battery; has builtin bluetooth which connects to a GPS device and an opensource mapper that pulls maps from Google.

Yeah, I made the right choice for me

I'm starting to consider getting a chumby to replace my musicpal i bought a while ago, mostly for this feature:



The musicpal has let me down a number of times already when it had network problems. It supposedly has the same feature, with a rooster's call, but that's either too soft or it just doesn't work.

Just noticed this though, i hate ads:

http://forum.chumby.com/viewtopic.php?id=2910

Yup, that pretty much removes the Chumby from my own sphere of interests.

-ml

The ads aren't mandatory. At any time, you can use the information provided by them to make your own control panel and not have the device interact with their network. You also can skip paying for the base device too and take their hardware plans to build your own.

The ads help pay for the network service. Now, it would be nice if they did offer tiered service, like a free ad supported network like they have now, and a $3 a month or something ad free subscription.

For my use at work, the cost of the hardware is proving to be an excellent deal for what we get out of it. When we are done it won't be tied into the Chumby network, so the ads won't ever be seen.

I realize that this isn't the Unofficial Chumby BBS, but what does their network get you?

From what I can tell, access to be able to push content to the Chumby from their web site. They allow you to configure "Channels" that are basically playlists of flash apps that cycle on the display of the device. So a morning channel could be a weather app, some news app, and maybe a traffic app. If the unit doesn't have the flash app you configure on the site, the Chumby pulls it down off their servers.

The ads they inject end up being a quick little flash ad with no sound that come between your channels. I've only seen one so far, and it was a Chumby 101 info ad.

The device does let you freeze one app on the screen instead of auto cycling. I'm not sure if doing so stops the ads as well. I'd assume so, as I had an app frozen for over 24 hours along with a partial screen overwrite from my hacks, and it was never cleared off.

Chumby arived at my place after traveling around more than half of the world: http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=107252440439095945889.00045bf9932eebbbcbb61&ll=46.073231,-131.835937&spn=121.271023,316.40625&z=2

First impressions:
- cute!
- Pandora works in europe
- Haven't seen any ads yet.
- No sleep timer by default, can be done with a script: http://forum.chumby.com/viewtopic.php?id=1985
- No volume ramp for alarm
- Still just a little bit to bright in nightmode, maybe i was just a bit too early with ordering, now there's a 2009 version with: "Day/night screen brightness controls"
http://store.chumby.com/one_page_chumby_differences.php

Some new stuff out there in the Chumby world. Makers Shed sells a Chumby kit if someone wants to build it into a specific device.

They also released a new Chumby One, a slightly more powerful CPU wise Chumby with a hard plastic case, dedicated volume control, an option for a lithium battery, and $100. I'm tempted to get one for the office again.

As far as the earlier discussion of ads, I have yet to see one with it at home again and reconnected to the Chumby network over the past few months. I'm guessing they might have gone a different route to bring in revenue, as I believe certain TVs now also support running Chumby widgets.

Seems like a super price for the new model considering what the device is, does and can do (or be made to do).

It would make a nice little Squeezebox for the bed side as a matter of fact. I think I even remember reading that it already supported streaming from SBS, though I don't know if anyone has written an App to actually browse and control playback and playlists.

Goes to show you how cheaply this type of hardware can actually be sold for. People on the Squeezebox forum think Logitech is selling their new Squeebox products at a $5 markup and don't balk when the find out that the $200 radio model doesn't come with a battery nor remote, which will set you back another $50.

Heh
I should thank whoever started the Chumby thing

As I posted, I got the N800 and started working on Maemo...

Eventually I got into Mer as a way to make the OS as open as possible.

This lead to becoming build mentor for Mer and using the openSuse OBS to build the distro. (I like Suse - I'm a solid Debian user and Suse is rpm based - and yet their builder builds .debs ... very, very open and community-minded approach).

Mer mixes the open bits of Maemo with Ubuntu and runs it on 'other' devices as well as the Nokia ones. We've had interest from several Asian manufacturers and it's a great port for a handheld x86/ARM touch-based device. Greg KH was helping us when these manufacturers threw their kernel source at us at one point. Oh, and Nokia/Maemo/Mer is one reason TI just opened (some of) the 3D drivers for the older OMAP2 devices (N800/N810).

I lost my job early in the year and took a gamble on putting all my energy (about 6 months of 9am-midnight 7 days a week) into OSS things...

Anyhow, my Mer work took me onto some Maemo events including the Maemo 2009 Summit in Amsterdam where I got my developer N900

Finally it paid off and Nokia hired me indirectly to work on doing linuxy things on some internal projects.

So, thanks again for mentioning the Chumby

More on the Maemo openness - this really looks like the best open platform out there today.
IMHO Nokia really are trying to "do the right thing" wrt OSS and balance it with surviving in a commercial world.

It comes with root pretty much out of the box via a Nokia application - no hacking needed.
Nokia explicitly permit redistribution of the closed blobs - cf Android

There's even some really interesting (and still scary) DRM stuff happening...
The next device will have ARMs version of TPM - and we'll have a signed kernel.

The interesting thing is that the bootloader will still run an unsigned 'community' kernel. It just won't open the on-device DRM HW key.
I am extremely dubious about this since it seems to me that it may actually be a viable OSS DRM solution - but hey, lets see where it goes...