The Chumby was a consumer electronics product formerly made by Chumby Industries, Inc. It is an embedded computer which provides Internet and LAN access via a Wi-Fi connection. Through this connection, the Chumby runs various software widgets. In 2010 Sony introduced a single product based on an offshoot version of Chumby, the Sony Dash.
Roughly resembling a small clock radio, the original Chumby features a small resistive touch-screen housed in a leather-and-plastic exterior with six color options. Power to the original Chumby and the Chumby 8 is supplied through an AC adapter. A later model, the Chumby One, also offered the option of a 9 v backup battery. Related devices, the Infocast 3.5 and Infocast 8, devices manufactured by Best Buy based on the Chumby software, are also only AC powered. The device is designed to be customizable by users: [1] after agreeing to the Chumby HDK License, users may download schematics and other hardware information. [2] Wired magazine named Chumby one of its top gadgets for 2008. [3] Its software is mostly open source, running on Linux.
In 2012, Chumby ceased operation and was liquidated, [4] with the assets being purchased by Duane Maxwell, the former Chief Technology Officer of Chumby Industries, who formed Blue Octy, LLC ("Blue Octy"). The server needed to keep the devices running was kept online as a full service by Blue Octy until March 2013. At that point, the server went offline and all devices only displayed a single widget, referred to as the "Space Clock." Blue Octy relaunched the full Chumby service on July 1, 2014 as a paid subscription service, currently charging US$3 per month. An open source firmware is available for free that allows existing devices some of the functionality of the paid service at no cost, although this may violate the copyright of those who developed the Chumby widgets. [5] Devices without a subscription still receive the Space Clock widget; they can be used as alarm clocks and to stream music.
Andrew "bunnie" Huang was the lead hardware engineer at Chumby. The Chumby premiered on August 25, 2006 at Foo Camp and was released to around 100 alpha release testers at the event. [6] [7]
Shortly after Foo Camp, Chumby announced a free offer, where applicants would receive the same alpha-level Chumby as those previously given away. Applicants submitted ideas for software applications or hardware modifications. One of the goals for the free offer was to have Chumbys in the hands of developers who were willing to begin building applications. [8]
In July 2007, a First 50 was released to 50 random applicants, who received the next generation of Chumbys. [9] This was followed, in September, with an Insiders Release. Interested parties could send e-mail to Chumby requesting release information, and were given the opportunity to join in the Insiders Release. [10] Finally, in February 2008, the commercial release was made public on the Chumby Store. [11] In May 2008, the price was $179.95 [12] for any one of three colors, latte, basic black, and pearl. In Japan, Chumby was available through Zyyx, Inc. as www.chumby.jp since October 23, 2008. In Australia, the Chumby was available through ISP Internode.
In November 2009 the Chumby One was released: a similar, all-plastic version of the original in white with blue trim. The major difference was the hard plastic case replacing the soft leather. Other changes include a slightly faster processor, only one USB port on the rear of the device, and inclusion of an FM tuner and physical volume knob. The hard plastic case allowed Chumby Industries to offer the Chumby One at a reduced price of $119.95.
In April 2012, Chumby announced the cessation of hardware sales, having ceased manufacture of their own hardware the previous year and exhausted their inventory. [13] On April 20 it was confirmed that the company itself was being broken up. [14] [15] Dedicated fans managed to keep the service running for a period following the company's demise, [16] but on 20 February 2013 Chumby shut down its servers, leaving users with a simple clock that shows time, calendar, and date. A brief message appears on the Chumby Web site, explaining the suspension of service. Alternative open source firmware prepared for such an eventuality became available at this point.
As of January 2013 [update] , Blue Octy was in the process of reviving the chumby technology, with one of the original chumby developers working on the project. Visiting www.chumby.com shows details.
Towards the end of March 2014, Blue Octy began beta testing the soon to be revived chumby service.
On July 1, 2014, Blue Octy relaunched the Chumby service as a sustainable, subscription-based platform. [17] [18]
In July 2017, Blue Octy undertook an effort to rescue the Sony Dash after Sony discontinued support for it. [19] and by August 2017, a patch was released for the Sony Dash HID-C10 models to allow them to connect to the Blue Octy Chumby servers, thus extending their useful life. [20]
In 2022 to early 2023, programmer Doug Brown added support for running a modern Linux 6.x kernel on the Chumby 8, with much of the support being accepted into upstream Linux. [21] [22]
The Chumby is designed to be modified by users, with schematics, printed circuit board layouts and packaging/outerware designs available. Hardware specifications are as follows [23]
The Original Chumby
The Chumby One [24]
Comparison table [12]
| Comparison | Chumby One | Infocast 3.5 | Original | Chumby 8 | Infocast 8 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Resolution | 320×240 | 320×240 | 800x600 | 800x600 | |
| Screen | 3.5" | 3.5" | 3.5" | 8" | 8" |
| Manage content channels from device | |||||
| Free subscriptions loaded and updated by Chumby | No | No | Yes | ||
| Event scheduler UI | No | No | Yes | ||
| Upload photos and videos to favorite photo-sharing sites | No | No | Yes | ||
| External media support | Yes | Yes | SD, MMC, CF, USB | ||
| Updated sharing features | No | No | Yes | Yes | |
| WebKit browser (chumbrowser) | No | No | Yes | ||
| Accelerometer (motion sensor) | Yes | No | |||
| USB port | 1 USB 2.0 high speed port | 1 USB 2.0 high speed port | 2 USB 2.0 high speed ports | ||
| FM radio tuner | Yes | Yes | No | No | No |
| Wi-Fi connectivity (802.11 b/g) | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Processor | 454 MHz ARM processor | 454 MHz ARM processor | 350 MHz Arm9 | 800 MHz Marvell ARMADA 166 | Marvell Mohawk |
| RAM | 64 MB DDR SDRAM | 64 MB DDR SDRAM | 64 MB DDR2 SDRAM | 128 MB DDR2 SDRAM | 128 MB DDR2 SDRAM |
| ROM | Internal microSD card firmware | Internal microSD card firmware | 64 MB of NAND flash ROM | Internal 2 GB microSD FLASH storage |
Hacking the Chumby hardware was encouraged by the manufacturer. [25] Schematics and other hardware information may be downloaded after the user agrees to the Chumby HDK License. [2] For example, users on the Chumby Forums have experimented with and documented some battery hacks, allowing the Chumby to be operated without AC power for short periods of time. [26] [27]
There also exists a Chumby Hacker Board that mostly resembles a Chumby One motherboard. There are some differences to hardware connectivity. Chumby Industries did not officially support the board. [28] [29]
Chumby units run a modified Linux kernel. The software originally installed on the device was designed to play a set of user-customizable widgets, small Adobe Flash animations that deliver real-time information. This is possible because an embedded version of Adobe Flash Player is installed. The animations have the ability to control and interact with the low-level hardware, thereby enabling functionality such as smart alarm clocks that bring the hardware out of sleep, a Web-based picture viewer, a Web-based camera, online RSS feeds, and physical user interface features, such as gesture recognition by squeezing the soft housing.
The software for the Chumby automatically updated when something new became available. The updates came from the free access to the Chumby network, and a modified BitTorrent client was used to upgrade the open-source portions of its firmware.
Although the prototypes did not support video playback, [30] all versions since May 2007 use Flash Lite 3 [31] which allows for Sorenson, FLV, H.264, VP6 and On2 video playback. [32]
In computing, firmware is software that provides low-level control of computing device hardware. For a relatively simple device, firmware may perform all control, monitoring and data manipulation functionality. For a more complex device, firmware may provide relatively low-level control as well as hardware abstraction services to higher-level software such as an operating system.
Knoppix, stylized KNOPPIX, is an operating system based on Debian designed to be run directly from a CD / DVD or a USB flash drive. It was first released in 2000 by German Linux consultant Klaus Knopper, and was one of the first popular live distributions. Knoppix is loaded from the removable medium and decompressed into a RAM drive. The decompression is transparent and on-the-fly.
The Linksys WRT54G Wi-Fi series is a series of Wi-Fi–capable residential gateways marketed by Linksys, a subsidiary of Cisco, from 2003 until acquired by Belkin in 2013. A residential gateway connects a local area network to a wide area network.
udev is a device manager for the Linux kernel. As the successor of devfsd and hotplug, udev primarily manages device nodes in the /dev directory. At the same time, udev also handles all user space events raised when hardware devices are added into the system or removed from it, including firmware loading as required by certain devices.
The NSLU2 is a network-attached storage (NAS) device made by Linksys introduced in 2004 and discontinued in 2008. It makes USB flash memory and hard disks accessible over a network using the SMB protocol. It was superseded mainly by the NAS200 and in another sense by the WRT600N and WRT300N/350N which both combine a Wi-Fi router with a storage link.
The Sony Reader (ソニー・リーダー) was a line of e-book readers manufactured by Sony. The first model was the PRS-500 released in September 2006 and was related to the earlier Sony Librie, the first commercial E Ink e-reader in 2004 using an electronic paper display developed by E Ink Corporation. The last model was the PRS-T3, after which Sony announced it would no longer release a new consumer e-reader.
The Nintendo Wi-Fi USB Connector is a wireless game adapter, developed by Nintendo and Buffalo Technology, which allows the Nintendo DS, Wii and 3DS users without a Wi-Fi connection or compatible Wi-Fi network to establish an Internet connection via a broadband-connected PC. When inserted into the host PC's USB port, the connector functions with the Nintendo DS, Wii, DSi and 3DS, permitting the user to connect to the Internet and play Nintendo games that require a Wi-Fi connection and access various other online services. According to the official Nintendo website, this product was the best-selling Nintendo accessory to date on 15 November 2007, but was discontinued in the same month. On September 9, 2005, Nintendo announced the Nintendo Wi-Fi Network Adapter, an 802.11g wireless router/bridge which serves a similar purpose.
In the context of free and open-source software, proprietary software only available as a binary executable is referred to as a blob or binary blob. The term usually refers to a device driver module loaded into the kernel of an open-source operating system, and is sometimes also applied to code running outside the kernel, such as system firmware images, microcode updates, or userland programs. The term blob was first used in database management systems to describe a collection of binary data stored as a single entity.
My Life Online (Mylo) was a device created and marketed by Sony for portable instant messaging and other Internet-based communications, browsing Internet web sites using the Opera web browser and playback and sharing of media files. The pocket-sized, tablet-shaped handheld device, which debuted in 2006, had a screen which slid up to reveal a QWERTY keyboard. The brand name 'Mylo' means My Life Online. Using Wi-Fi instead of cellular networks, the Mylo was targeted to the 18–24 age group.
Openmoko is a discontinued project to create a family of mobile phones that are open source, including the hardware specification, the operating system, and actual smartphone development implementation like the Neo 1973 and Neo FreeRunner. The whole project was sponsored by Openmoko Inc.
OtherOS is a feature of early versions of the PlayStation 3 video game console, allowing user installed software, such as Linux or FreeBSD. The feature was removed since system firmware update 3.21, released on April 1, 2010.
Archos Generation 5 is a series of portable media players introduced in 2007.
The Huawei E220 is a Huawei HSDPA access device (modem) manufactured by Huawei and notable for using the USB interface.
A software widget is a relatively simple and easy-to-use software application or component made for one or more different software platforms.
According to the Free Software Foundation Latin America, Linux-libre is a modified version of the Linux kernel that contains no binary blobs, obfuscated code, or code released under proprietary licenses. In the Linux kernel, those types of code are mostly used for proprietary firmware images. While generally redistributable, they do not give the user the freedom to audit, modify, or, consequently, redistribute their modified versions. The GNU Project keeps Linux-libre in synchronization with the mainline Linux kernel.
The Dash was a device manufactured by Sony that connected using Wi-Fi to the Internet. It had a touch screen which the user could use to browse information or listen to music. It was not a portable device since it did not have an internal battery. It was positioned as a personal internet viewer which could act as an alarm clock, Internet radio, digital photo frame and many other uses. It had applications which were downloaded onto the device. These were the same as those supported by the Chumby device.
4FFF N618 is a discontinued electronic-book reader developed by an Indian Company, Condor Technology Associates, and based on a Linux platform. The device is sold under various brand names worldwide.
The hacking of consumer electronics is a common practice that users perform to customize and modify their devices beyond what is typically possible. This activity has a long history, dating from the days of early computer, programming, and electronics hobbyists.
Qisda ES900 is a discontinued electronic-book reader developed by Qisda Corporation and based on a Linux platform. The device is sold under various brand names worldwide.
The PinePhone is a smartphone developed by Hong Kong-based computer manufacturer Pine64, designed to provide users with full control over the device. This is achieved through the utilization of mainline Linux-based mobile operating systems, assembly of the phone using screws, and facilitating simplified disassembly for repairs and upgrades. LTE, GPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and both cameras can be physically switched off. The PinePhone ships with the Manjaro Linux operating system using the Plasma Mobile graphic interface, although other distributions can be installed by users.
Satircial criticism of Chumby
(non-Android) Linux-powered devices | ||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Computers, components |
|  | ||||||||||||
| Accessories |
| |||||||||||||
| Historic | ||||||||||||||
✝ Excluding Android devices. | ||||||||||||||