"When you make a thing, a thing that is new, it is so complicated making it that it is bound to be ugly. But those that make it after you, they don’t have to worry about making it. And they can make it pretty, and so everybody can like it when others make it after you"
Daniel tipped us off to a new consumer device in the works called the NeTV. It’s being branded as an inline device to allow the transformation of dumb HD TVs into smart ones. You can check out the consumer features on the “What is” wiki. Since it is coming from chumby industries it looks like it will have good support for developers and hackers.
NeTV is a robust, wifi-enabled embedded linux computer that can connect to HD video sources and sinks. It has very strong potential applications in education, digital signage, smart energy, and low-cost computing.
Shortly after I moved into my flat in Singapore about a year ago, I found out that right in my “back yard” a 70-story skyscraper (Altez) was breaking ground. I guess most people would be a little put out that their view is getting blocked, but actually I was quite excited (although, it was also interesting to watch the formerly visible shipyard load ships). I find construction sites to be fascinating and educational. However, I don’t have the time to just stare out my window all day, so with a little help from xobs I modded a chumby One and added a USB camera to it, and created a script that snaps a 1280×1024 jpeg of the scene once every 15 minutes. All that data is collated on a NAS and finally encoded into a viewable video using mencoder.
NEW PRODUCT – 2.1mm to 1.7mm DC jack adapter. For Chumby Hacker Board enthusiasts, we have an adapter that will let you use any off the shelf 5VDC regulated supply with a 2.1mm DC barrel plug.
…here’s where it gets interesting: Because anyone can submit an app and Chumby Industries has been very open to hacking the Linux kernel, there are several ways to change the firmware with OpenEmbedded to tailor the device to your own needs. With that, Chumby becomes a very inexpensive, connected, touch-screen ARM development kit. In addition, there is a lot of community support in the Chumby wiki.
There are some cool projects in the wiki like turning it into a Web server and connecting it to an iPod as a music server. With the increasing number of home wireless networks being installed in the US there is so much potential for device like the Chumby to be used as interfaces for home security, appliances, irrigation, and climate control. This is in contrast to the variety of home automation devices on the market, most of are expensive and complex to set up. Is there a nascent market for cheap home automation products like the old X10 protocol but based on 802.11?
The Chumby Hacker Board is a cool single board Linux computer that has much of the same hardware as the famous Chumby One. It’s great for people who are experienced with Linux and want to have the power of a microcomputer with audio and video output while at the same time getting all the peripherals of a microcontroller such as analog-to-digital conversion, PWM outputs, sensors, bit twiddling, and broken-out GPIOs!
While we believe that the CHB is a fairly easy-to-use Single Board Computer, having a pre-installed OS on the included uSD card and drivers for the peripherals, it’s not designed for beginners! The board is best used by those with previous Linux experience. The good news is you don’t have to have another Linux computer to set up the CHB but you should have familiarity with shells and shell scripting, gcc, make, dmesg, etc. We also suggest having had some poking around with microcontrollers such as BASIC Stamp, Arduino, AVR, PIC, 8051, etc. So that when we say “i2c” and “not 5v tolerant I/Os” you can follow along
In this video, Eric Gregori of EMGRobotics demonstrates how he controls the Freescale Mechatronics board with the Chumby over USB. Starting out with a stock Chumby from Best Buy, Eric steps through how to access the Easter egg hacker screen. Then after installing the Terra Term terminal program on your computer you SSH to the Chumby. From there you can program the Chumby to read sensors, control servos and more.
Good news for Chumby hackers! Bunnie has set up some Amazon EC2 cloud instance images to facilitate hackers that want to build full, from-scratch images of their own for the hacker board. The build is a subset of the features shipped in the firmware with the chumby hacker board, as it is targeted at serious embedded developers who basically want a simple, reliable substrate to start development from, without all the bells and whistles.
chumby industries today announced the release of the chumby8, the much-anticipated next generation chumby device. Officially launching on April 5, the chumby8 is priced at $199 and available today for pre-orders at chumby.com/store. With a sleek new design, an 8-inch LCD touchscreen, enhanced features, and over 1,500 free apps, the chumby8 delivers a personalized stream of your favorite apps in addition to serving as a igital photo frame and music player. “The chumby8 truly marks an evolution of the chumby device and software platform, creating a more personalized and user-friendly Internet streaming device that will complete any connected home or office” said Derrick Oien, CEO of chumby industries. “We’ve taken the time over the past year to listen to chumby fans and owners and incorporate their feedback into the new chumby8 and created a great multi-purpose connected device capable of tailoring to all.”
New features of the chumby8 include:
New, modern industrial design available in black and red. Customized skins available from Skinit
8-inch 800×600 touchscreen LCD
Two USB ports, CF and SD slots make it possible to upload pictures, music and other personal media of your choosing turning your chumby8 into a personalized digital photo frame and music player
New web browser support, allows you to access links within apps
Revamped UI and streamlined navigation allows you to manage apps and channels directly from the device. The chumby8 comes preloaded with ready-to- play themed channels showcasing the best chumby apps in entertainment, news, humor, games, kids, sports and more
Updates to share features make it easier to send photos, videos and apps to friends and family
Robust Internet radio offers over 10,000 internet radio and podcast stations, including Napster, Pandora, SHOUTcast, iheartradio, Mediafly, New York Times and CBS, with more to come.
Full alarm system allows you to wake up to your favorite music stations and apps
Task scheduler allows you to perform a routine task on your device like entering night mode at a certain time or playing music.
Flash Lite 4 update to support AS3 coming soon
The chumby8 has access to over 1,500 free applications- ranging from music and social networking sites, news and entertainment gossip, to video clips and sports scores. Content is available from well-known media sites including: YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, MTV Networks, Groupon, People.com and many others. Users can monitor their social networks, view and share their photos from sites like Flickr and Photobucket, watch sports clips, play games, or choose from a multitude of clock applications to display on the touchscreen device.
Each day during the week we’re going to have a sale on one (or more) items in our store week days 12/6 through 12/21. Just tune in to the site, or twitter or our RSS feed each day for the code that will give you 11% off.
The items will all go to eleven % off. Each day, eleven, eleven, eleven and… It’s not ten. You see, most places, you know, will be doing sales at 10% off. They’re stuck on 10% off – Where can they go from there? Where? Nowhere. Exactly. What we do is, if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do? Put it up to eleven.
Chumby Hacker Board – v1.0. The Chumby Hacker Board is a cool single board Linux computer that has much of the same hardware as the famous Chumby One. It’s great for people who are experienced with Linux and want to have the power of a microcomputer with audio and video output while at the same time getting all the peripherals of a microcontroller such as analog-to-digital conversion, PWM outputs, sensors, bit twiddling, and broken-out GPIOs!
While we believe that the CHB is a fairly easy-to-use Single Board Computer, having a pre-installed OS on the included uSD card and drivers for the peripherals, it’s not designed for beginners! The board is best used by those with previous Linux experience. The good news is you don’t have to have another Linux computer to set up the CHB but you should have familiarity with shells and shell scripting, gcc, make, dmesg, etc. We also suggest having had some poking around with microcontrollers such as BASIC Stamp, Arduino, AVR, PIC, 8051, etc. So that when we say “i2c” and “not 5v tolerant I/Os” you can follow along.
This is the v1.0 release, slightly updated from the Beta. This version does not have ‘Arduino’ headers on the back anymore, since they were not terribly useful. Instead, the 0.1″ header breakout has been expanded to include more useful pins. This makes the CHB slimmer but just as useful. The SD card has been doubled in size.
BACK IN STOCK AND UPDATED – Chumby Hacker Board – v1.0. The Chumby Hacker Board is a cool single board Linux computer that has much of the same hardware as the famous Chumby One. It’s great for people who are experienced with Linux and want to have the power of a microcomputer with audio and video output while at the same time getting all the peripherals of a microcontroller such as analog-to-digital conversion, PWM outputs, sensors, bit twiddling, and broken-out GPIOs!
While we believe that the CHB is a fairly easy-to-use Single Board Computer, having a pre-installed OS on the included uSD card and drivers for the peripherals, it’s not designed for beginners! The board is best used by those with previous Linux experience. The good news is you don’t have to have another Linux computer to set up the CHB but you should have familiarity with shells and shell scripting, gcc, make, dmesg, etc. We also suggest having had some poking around with microcontrollers such as BASIC Stamp, Arduino, AVR, PIC, 8051, etc. So that when we say “i2c” and “not 5v tolerant I/Os” you can follow along.
This is the v1.0 release, slightly updated from the Beta. This version does not have ‘Arduino’ headers on the back anymore, since they were not terribly useful. Instead, the 0.1″ header breakout has been expanded to include more useful pins. This makes the CHB slimmer but just as useful. The SD card has been doubled in size.
Low cost ($100) WiFi thermostat also has Zigbee support?!?! This smells like it might be a hackable device. Might even be a PID controller? If it is you could partner something like this with Tweet a Watts, a chumby and you have a good start on DIY home automation. “there is space for a ZigBee module to be plugged into the back of the thermostat, as well as space for a module to enable demand response” I would like to see if I can get an FCC id off one and look at some board images.
Congrats to Adam Gutterman for finding the cake. The cake is hidden on an internal ground layer, printed in “negative” (i.e., lack of copper on a copper plane). The visible-light photos I make of the motherboards are all taken with front-lit scanners, so the negative image is virtually invisible when viewed in that way. There’s also a solid copper ground plane behind the cake as well, so you can’t simply hold the board up to a light to find the cake (hence the larger bounty). The only two methods to find the cake are to either X-ray the board, or to mechanically delaminate the board using either knife or sandpaper (or both) to reveal the cake. And for the record, the region where the cake is located is electrically inert, such that defacing the chumby logo to reveal the cake does not damage the function of the device.
First of all, two chumby-powered devices under the Insignia brand in Best Buy are on sale for Black Friday. The original 8″ Infocast device — an 800 MHz linux PC with an 8″ SVGA LCD and touchscreen — is rumored to be on sale for as low as $99 in some stores, although Best Buy’s on-line price pegs it at $129. Either way, it’s a smashing deal for a linux PC.
The other chumby-powered device is the 3.5″ Infocast, which you can think of as the Chumby One Internet Radio’s battery-less little brother. This, too, is on sale for Black Friday, and at just $79, it’s a steal.
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