8 ms·

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 tha

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

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