4 ms·

I really loved the idea of Chumby. Would have killed it if it had come out more recently as an IoT device.

abetusk 10y ago
Not likely. They centered the platform heavily around Flash so that it was difficult to do any development or hacking on it.
- andrewguenther 10y ago
  I meant more as a concept, I agree that Flash was a large detriment to its success.
- georgemcbay 10y ago
  It was quite easy to do non-Flash development and hacking on the chumby if you wanted to, though admittedly there would then be no "market" for the app (not that Chumby really had any kind of market at all, you could upload community apps but there was no ability to sell them). The chumby was basically just a small, touchscreen ARM based Linux system, before the raspberry pi made that cool (and super cheap). I've hacked on them quite extensively professionally (I was a chumby employee) and personally in Flash/haxe/C/Python and even golang, and lots of others outside the company did as well. One of my favorite bits of work at chumby was helping NPR Labs (their director at the time, Rich Rarey, was a chumby fan) with this project: http://www.npr.org/sections/npr-extra/2013/05/28/177751307/breaking-the-sound-barrier-npr-labs-brings-radio-to-hearing-impaired http://www.npr.org/sections/npr-extra/2013/05/28/177751307/b... The prototype for this was the bigger 8" chumby (the Best Buy branded one at the time), hooked to a braille reader. I wrote drivers for the braille reader and an ActionScript player extension (I've seen the source code to the Flash player and lived to tell the tale!) so they could interact with it from ActionScript code. You can see a photo of the older chumby-based version here: https://sites.duke.edu/nab2012/2012/05/03/npr-demonstrates-technology-to-make-radio-more-accessible/ https://sites.duke.edu/nab2012/2012/05/03/npr-demonstrates-t... However, I'm also pretty skeptical that chumby re-imagined (without a serious shift in how it was targeted) would be successful if released today. The chumby (basically an Internet-connected alarm clock and radio and by the way, some random apps) made a lot of sense prior to the iPhone/Android revolution in smartphones, but not so much after that.
  - zdw 10y ago
    Any chance you know of a more modern set of kernel patches for the Infocast (8" BB model) than what Chumby released, or if there's any community developed support? I have two of them and back in the day I followed Bunnie's guide here to get a browser going on it: http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=1294 http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=1294
    - georgemcbay 10y ago
      Nope. Looks like you asked me this same question quite a while ago (kudos for persistence in trying to get it updated!): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7975378 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7975378 Not aware of anyone making available newer, working patches since then either... I don't even have any working chumby 8" devices anymore.
      - zdw 10y ago
        Wow, way to remember that. I've keep it around asone of those "hey I could do this eventually..." sorts of things that's probably not worth it anymore given that a raspberry pi and the official touchscreen is <$100. > I don't even have any working chumby 8" devices anymore. Do you want one?
        georgemcbay 10y ago
        Nope, but thanks for asking! I have the same issue you do where I keep things around just in case I might someday make a project with them. I actually got rid of a bunch of my old chumby devices (plus a lot of old freescale developer boards and miscellaneous embedded devices) specifically in a purge to get rid of such things, so I don't want to relapse! I've found (as you mentioned) that if such a project does turn up I'm better off just buying a newish device like whatever the newest raspberry pi is and using that... more expensive than using scavenged parts, but lots less wasted time trying to get a modern kernel up, etc.
    - duskwuff 10y ago
      I was working on getting Linux 3.13 ported over a while back. Never got everything working (audio and wifi was particularly painful), but it might be a start: https://github.com/duskwuff/silvermoon-linux https://github.com/duskwuff/silvermoon-linux
yoodenvranx 10y ago
Is there a more modern and DIY version of the Chumby?
mwcampbell 10y ago
I didn't know about the Chumby at the time; I only read about it after the fact. But with the benefit of hindsight, I can think of one detail in the execution that probably didn't help the product's longevity. In 2009, at around the time that the iPhone 3GS and newer Android phones were using ARMv7-based processors and 256 MB of RAM, the Chumby One used an ARMv5-based chip (the i.MX233) that could only handle 64 MB of RAM. [1] Not exactly a forward-looking move. But I don't know if Bunnie could have done it differently. Was there any ARMv7 or even ARMv6-based chip available to startup companies at that time with the i.MX233's high analog integration and low cost? [1]: https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=611 https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=611
- Sanddancer 10y ago
  Not really. That little chip is /still/ about the fastest chip you're gonna get for any sort of hardware hacking project for which you want a display, and the ability to prototype using one of the super cheap pcb makers.
  - mwcampbell 10y ago
    Really? Can you explain more about why the i.MX233 has those unique benefits? Might it be better to use something like the CHIP (https://getchip.com/ https://getchip.com/), based on an Allwinner R8, instead? Yes, the CHIP is itself a PCB, but it's so small and has enough pin headers that I guess you could treat it as a system-on-module and solder it to a carrier board. Starting a new project with an ARMv5-based processor today seems really stupid to me, even more so than in 2009. But maybe I'm just hyper-sensitive about obsolete hardware because a community that I care about has been burned in that area before. I'm talking about PDAs designed specifically for blind people. I explained more about that in a mailing list posting here: https://www.mail-archive.com/arm-netbook@lists.phcomp.co.uk/msg01176.html https://www.mail-archive.com/arm-netbook@lists.phcomp.co.uk/...
    - Sanddancer 10y ago
      The big advantage comes from its packaging and everything built into the chip. It comes in a 144 pin lqfp package, which means that routing pins can be done by a couple people with real minimal amounts of training, and it can be laid out onto a two-layer board, which tends to be a lot cheaper than a four layer board which a bga package pretty much requires. It's also got a dac and adc built in which has the circuitry to directly drive headphones, so you don't need amplification circuitry to do that. Similarly, it's got integrated power regulation, so you don't need those chips either. Finally, all the info on it is available in a datasheet you don't need to jump through hoops to read [1]. It's not as fast as a chip, but because of everything it has, it's much more flexible for when you are designing something. [1] http://www.nxp.com/assets/documents/data/en/reference-manuals/IMX23RM.pdf http://www.nxp.com/assets/documents/data/en/reference-manual...

Not likely. They centered the platform heavily around Flash so that it was difficult to do any development or hacking on it.

andrewguenther 10y ago
I meant more as a concept, I agree that Flash was a large detriment to its success.
georgemcbay 10y ago
It was quite easy to do non-Flash development and hacking on the chumby if you wanted to, though admittedly there would then be no "market" for the app (not that Chumby really had any kind of market at all, you could upload community apps but there was no ability to sell them). The chumby was basically just a small, touchscreen ARM based Linux system, before the raspberry pi made that cool (and super cheap). I've hacked on them quite extensively professionally (I was a chumby employee) and personally in Flash/haxe/C/Python and even golang, and lots of others outside the company did as well. One of my favorite bits of work at chumby was helping NPR Labs (their director at the time, Rich Rarey, was a chumby fan) with this project: http://www.npr.org/sections/npr-extra/2013/05/28/177751307/breaking-the-sound-barrier-npr-labs-brings-radio-to-hearing-impaired http://www.npr.org/sections/npr-extra/2013/05/28/177751307/b... The prototype for this was the bigger 8" chumby (the Best Buy branded one at the time), hooked to a braille reader. I wrote drivers for the braille reader and an ActionScript player extension (I've seen the source code to the Flash player and lived to tell the tale!) so they could interact with it from ActionScript code. You can see a photo of the older chumby-based version here: https://sites.duke.edu/nab2012/2012/05/03/npr-demonstrates-technology-to-make-radio-more-accessible/ https://sites.duke.edu/nab2012/2012/05/03/npr-demonstrates-t... However, I'm also pretty skeptical that chumby re-imagined (without a serious shift in how it was targeted) would be successful if released today. The chumby (basically an Internet-connected alarm clock and radio and by the way, some random apps) made a lot of sense prior to the iPhone/Android revolution in smartphones, but not so much after that.
- zdw 10y ago
  Any chance you know of a more modern set of kernel patches for the Infocast (8" BB model) than what Chumby released, or if there's any community developed support? I have two of them and back in the day I followed Bunnie's guide here to get a browser going on it: http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=1294 http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=1294
  - georgemcbay 10y ago
    Nope. Looks like you asked me this same question quite a while ago (kudos for persistence in trying to get it updated!): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7975378 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7975378 Not aware of anyone making available newer, working patches since then either... I don't even have any working chumby 8" devices anymore.
    - zdw 10y ago
      Wow, way to remember that. I've keep it around asone of those "hey I could do this eventually..." sorts of things that's probably not worth it anymore given that a raspberry pi and the official touchscreen is <$100. > I don't even have any working chumby 8" devices anymore. Do you want one?
      - georgemcbay 10y ago
        Nope, but thanks for asking! I have the same issue you do where I keep things around just in case I might someday make a project with them. I actually got rid of a bunch of my old chumby devices (plus a lot of old freescale developer boards and miscellaneous embedded devices) specifically in a purge to get rid of such things, so I don't want to relapse! I've found (as you mentioned) that if such a project does turn up I'm better off just buying a newish device like whatever the newest raspberry pi is and using that... more expensive than using scavenged parts, but lots less wasted time trying to get a modern kernel up, etc.
  - duskwuff 10y ago
    I was working on getting Linux 3.13 ported over a while back. Never got everything working (audio and wifi was particularly painful), but it might be a start: https://github.com/duskwuff/silvermoon-linux https://github.com/duskwuff/silvermoon-linux

yoodenvranx 10y ago

Is there a more modern and DIY version of the Chumby?

mwcampbell 10y ago

I didn't know about the Chumby at the time; I only read about it after the fact. But with the benefit of hindsight, I can think of one detail in the execution that probably didn't help the product's longevity. In 2009, at around the time that the iPhone 3GS and newer Android phones were using ARMv7-based processors and 256 MB of RAM, the Chumby One used an ARMv5-based chip (the i.MX233) that could only handle 64 MB of RAM. [1] Not exactly a forward-looking move. But I don't know if Bunnie could have done it differently. Was there any ARMv7 or even ARMv6-based chip available to startup companies at that time with the i.MX233's high analog integration and low cost? [1]: https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=611 https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=611

Sanddancer 10y ago
Not really. That little chip is /still/ about the fastest chip you're gonna get for any sort of hardware hacking project for which you want a display, and the ability to prototype using one of the super cheap pcb makers.
- mwcampbell 10y ago
  Really? Can you explain more about why the i.MX233 has those unique benefits? Might it be better to use something like the CHIP (https://getchip.com/ https://getchip.com/), based on an Allwinner R8, instead? Yes, the CHIP is itself a PCB, but it's so small and has enough pin headers that I guess you could treat it as a system-on-module and solder it to a carrier board. Starting a new project with an ARMv5-based processor today seems really stupid to me, even more so than in 2009. But maybe I'm just hyper-sensitive about obsolete hardware because a community that I care about has been burned in that area before. I'm talking about PDAs designed specifically for blind people. I explained more about that in a mailing list posting here: https://www.mail-archive.com/arm-netbook@lists.phcomp.co.uk/msg01176.html https://www.mail-archive.com/arm-netbook@lists.phcomp.co.uk/...
  - Sanddancer 10y ago
    The big advantage comes from its packaging and everything built into the chip. It comes in a 144 pin lqfp package, which means that routing pins can be done by a couple people with real minimal amounts of training, and it can be laid out onto a two-layer board, which tends to be a lot cheaper than a four layer board which a bga package pretty much requires. It's also got a dac and adc built in which has the circuitry to directly drive headphones, so you don't need amplification circuitry to do that. Similarly, it's got integrated power regulation, so you don't need those chips either. Finally, all the info on it is available in a datasheet you don't need to jump through hoops to read [1]. It's not as fast as a chip, but because of everything it has, it's much more flexible for when you are designing something. [1] http://www.nxp.com/assets/documents/data/en/reference-manuals/IMX23RM.pdf http://www.nxp.com/assets/documents/data/en/reference-manual...