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.

Definitely keeping my eye on this project.  

Via Engadget

Chumby Mecanum Wheel Rover via HaD.

A Time-Lapse Construction Video @ bunnie’s blog.

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.

Chumby offers opportunity for home engineering @ EDN.

…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?

Read more…

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 stock and shipping now.

Chumby controls Freescale Mechatronics board over USB…

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.

Quickly build images for your Chumby Hacker board @ Quickstarting OE – ChumbyWiki…

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.

New Chumby is out!

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.

Woot.com has the Chumby One on sale. A great deal for some Chumby hacking.

One day only.

Thanks Josh !

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.

WHAT DID YOU SAY? 11% OFF WITH CODE?

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.

With all that said, today’s 11% off item is the Chumby Hacker Board – v1.0. Use the code CHUMBY on checkout and get the Chumby Hacker Board – v1.0 for 11% off, this is the best deal online and the only time we’ll have this item on sale. Today only! 12:01am ET to 11:59pm ET 12/16/2010

11% off! – Chumby Hacker Board – v1.0 TODAY ONLY

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.

Today’s 11% off item is the Chumby Hacker Board – v1.0. Use the code CHUMBY on checkout and get the Chumby Hacker Board – v1.0 for 11% off, this is the best deal online and the only time we’ll have this item on sale. Today only! 12:01am ET to 11:59pm ET 12/16/2010

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.

In stock and shipping immediately.

Cheap Wi-Fi Thermostats Arrive at Home Depot, Kevin writes in…

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.

Insignia – Infocast 3.5″ Internet Media Display – NS-DP3CH. $49.99 is a steal – Inside there’s a Chumby to hack around with… – Thanks Eli…

The Cake is Not a Lie @ bunnie’s blog…

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.

That was fast!

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.

Read more.

Motion-sensing bathroom noisemaker – made with the Chumby hacker board via MAKE.

Recently I was approached by an architecture/design firm to help with an electronic install at a client site. The client had requested a system that interacts with users in the bathroom- “interacts” meaning, hassles them when they come and go.

(…) The system has three events- enter, exit, and “loiter”, and sounds in different folders on the USB drive will be played for each event, allowing users to change the sounds later if they wish.

Prosecutors Seek to Block Xbox Hacking Pioneer From Mod Chip Trial @ Wired.com…

Want a live tutorial on how to hack an Xbox by the guy who actually wrote the book on it?

If so, you should plan to attend what likely would be the nation’s first federal jury trial of a defendant accused of jailbreaking Xbox 360s, installing mod chips that allow the console to run pirated or home-brewed games and applications.

Celebrity geek Andrew “Bunnie” Huang, the designer of the Chumby and author of the 2003 title Hacking the Xbox: An Introduction to Reverse Engineering, has agreed to testify for a southern California man charged under the anti-circumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Bunnie writes –

Eric Gregori from EMG Robotics recently linked me to a YouTube video originally posted on imxcommunity.org of a chumby One that he turned into a bipedal walker. This has got to be the most omgwtfbbq-cool robotics demo I’ve seen of the chumby One to date. Check it out. One small step toward our future robotic overlords…but hey, at least they’ll be open source. That might even be an improvement over what we have today.

Chumby Hacker Board – Beta. 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 Beta release, just for the hackers! The CHB is not in any way officially supported by Chumby Industries! Chumby has generously offered a Forum and Wiki where they will try to share information but there is absolutely no tech support or guarantee that the CHB will meet your project needs. Please do not contact Chumby directly either by email or phone for help with your CHB. If you have questions, please post to their forums to receive help from others and the occasional assistance from a CHB developer.

Whats so great about it anyhow? Well! We have a list!

• Freescale iMX.233 processor running at 454 MHZ
• 64 MB onboard RAM
• Comes with 512MB uSD card with 100 MB Linux installation all ready to go
• Dimensions are 3.9″ (100mm) x 2.4″ (60mm) x 0.75″ (20mm)
• 3.3V I/O pins can talk to most sensors, motor drivers, etc. No struggling with 1.8V levels.
• Low power, fanless design draws only (200?) mA at 5V
• Built-in Lithium Ion/Polymer battery charger and 5V boost converter for portable projects
• Three USB ports!
• 1W mono speaker amplifier (0.1″ JST onboard connector)
• Microphone input (0.05″ JST onboard connector)
• LCD controller with 2mm output port
• 3.5mm A/V output jack with stereo audio and NTSC/PAL composite video
• Back of board has GPIO outputs on 0.1″ header spacing, plug in an Arduino proto shield!
• Quadrature encoder connections onboard
• 5-way joystick on-board
• MMA7455 3-axis +-2G to +-8G accelerometer on-board
• 3.3V TTL serial port for easy shell access
• Full GCC toolchain is ready for you to download and get crackin’!
• Schematics, Gerbers and original layout files are at the Wiki

You’ll want to pick up a 5V switching power supply, a 3.3v FTDI cable and an A/V cable to get started.

Want some more information? Check out our Getting Started with the Chumby Hacker Board tutorial page which will show you how to get booted, connected and read data from the on-board triple-axis accelerometer in an evening. Wow!

In the Adafruit store now!

Xorg (frame buffer version) lives on the NTSC output!  I did the flashviewer to change output first, and needed to kill udev and restart it in the chroot along with hald, but I have mouse, keyboard, 720×480 screen.  Maybe I’ll try firefox, or Quake 3 again…  I still haven’t merged fedora into the chumby root. (Note: I also have the Xvnc running as a second X display at better resolution while the main one is running, but I hope to have a real remote desktop soon).

Chumby Hacker Board – Beta. 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 Beta release, just for the hackers! The CHB is not in any way officially supported by Chumby Industries! Chumby has generously offered a Forum and Wiki where they will try to share information but there is absolutely no tech support or guarantee that the CHB will meet your project needs. Please do not contact Chumby directly either by email or phone for help with your CHB. If you have questions, please post to their forums to receive help from others and the occasional assistance from a CHB developer.

Whats so great about it anyhow? Well! We have a list!

• Freescale iMX.233 processor running at 454 MHZ
• 64 MB onboard RAM
• Comes with 512MB uSD card with 100 MB Linux installation all ready to go
• Dimensions are 3.9″ (100mm) x 2.4″ (60mm) x 0.75″ (20mm)
• 3.3V I/O pins can talk to most sensors, motor drivers, etc. No struggling with 1.8V levels.
• Low power, fanless design draws only (200?) mA at 5V
• Built-in Lithium Ion/Polymer battery charger and 5V boost converter for portable projects
• Three USB ports!
• 1W mono speaker amplifier (0.1″ JST onboard connector)
• Microphone input (0.05″ JST onboard connector)
• LCD controller with 2mm output port
• 3.5mm A/V output jack with stereo audio and NTSC/PAL composite video
• Back of board has GPIO outputs on 0.1″ header spacing, plug in an Arduino proto shield!
• Quadrature encoder connections onboard
• 5-way joystick on-board
• MMA7455 3-axis +-2G to +-8G accelerometer on-board
• 3.3V TTL serial port for easy shell access
• Full GCC toolchain is ready for you to download and get crackin’!
• Schematics, Gerbers and original layout files are at the Wiki

You’ll want to pick up a 5V switching power supply, a 3.3v FTDI cable and an A/V cable to get started.

Want some more information? Check out our Getting Started with the Chumby Hacker Board tutorial page which will show you how to get booted, connected and read data from the on-board triple-axis accelerometer in an evening. Wow!

In the Adafruit store now!

Feedback on the Chumby beta boards wanted – make sure to post in the forums there, not the comments here – thanks!

If you post in the Chumby forums with feedback drop us an email support@adafruit.com with your order # from your Chumby order from us and we’ll send you out a special gift!

Greetings beta users of the hacker board!

Due to strong demand on the beta hackerboard, we’ve got to push up the schedule for the final release of the board. Before releasing the board for final production, however, I’d like to collect some feedback from existing users of the board. Please do post any comments or feedback you have on the boards!

In addition, for the final version, I’m considering dropping the Arduino connector headers. The headers aren’t 100% compatible with Arduino (the hackerboard has fewer PWM’s available so certain motor controller boards don’t work exactly as they do on Arduino), and they are a bit tricky for assembly. Instead, we’ll work with our distributors to make and stock a custom breakout board that plugs into the 44-pin header on the top-side of the board which will provide equivalent functions to many of the existing Arduino boards. Also, we should be able to make a breakout that plugs into the 44-pin header which can provide an Arduino interface for those who absolutely require a connector-compatible Arduino header.

Have any of the users on this forum made use of the Arduino headers, and if so, how have they been useful to you?

Feedback on the Chumby beta boards wanted – make sure to post in the forums there, not the comments here – thanks!

Greetings beta users of the hacker board!

Due to strong demand on the beta hackerboard, we’ve got to push up the schedule for the final release of the board. Before releasing the board for final production, however, I’d like to collect some feedback from existing users of the board. Please do post any comments or feedback you have on the boards!

In addition, for the final version, I’m considering dropping the Arduino connector headers. The headers aren’t 100% compatible with Arduino (the hackerboard has fewer PWM’s available so certain motor controller boards don’t work exactly as they do on Arduino), and they are a bit tricky for assembly. Instead, we’ll work with our distributors to make and stock a custom breakout board that plugs into the 44-pin header on the top-side of the board which will provide equivalent functions to many of the existing Arduino boards. Also, we should be able to make a breakout that plugs into the 44-pin header which can provide an Arduino interface for those who absolutely require a connector-compatible Arduino header.

Have any of the users on this forum made use of the Arduino headers, and if so, how have they been useful to you?

NEW TUTORIALS! – Chumby hackerboard Wi-Fi and audio streaming!

NEW PRODUCT – USB WiFi adapter (Chumby) - TL-WN321G – Whats the point of running your Chumby Hacker Board off of a battery if you cant use it to get online? Add this WiFi USB adapter to your hacker board for access anywhere! We even have a tutorial on how to get it set up and streaming MP3s in minutes.

In stock and shipping!

USB-Ethernet adapter (Chumby) – AX88772 – Want to add network capability? This 10/100 Ethernet adapter plugs into any of the USB ports for zippy Internet! Tested to work with the Chumby (it should also work with any Linux computer) and we have a tutorial on getting it running on the Chumby hacker board in 5 minutes or less!

Post from Bunnie (maker of the Chumby hacker board)…chumby hacker boards (now available in beta) « bunnie’s blog…

chumby is now offering a “hacker” board, which is the guts of the chumby One, but modified to be more hacker-friendly: it comes with three high speed USB host ports, uses the power connector from the Sony PSP (instead of the weird, hard to find connector on the chumby One) and incorporates a variety of headers, such as Arduino-style shield headers and a 44-pin breakout header that gives you access to a lot of digital I/O and some analog inputs. There’s even a four-directional switch on board and some LEDs so you can do quick hacks that don’t require a video display for user feedback. Speaking of the display, while this board doesn’t come standard with an LCD, it does provide composite video output via a 4-wire 1/8″ jack so you can, by using an iPod video cable, plug the chumby hacker board into any TV that supports a composite video input…

The board is priced at around $89. The goal of the beta program is to collect feedback from users who purchase the board to fine-tune the design and to figure out what I/Os and accessories make sense to bundle with the board. Like the Arduino, we don’t integrate a lot of features onto the mainboard itself (keeps base cost low). Instead, we’d like to make sure that adequate I/O resources exist for developers to hack in the peripheral module they require to complete their project — or for more enterprising developers to build their own flavor of peripheral board and sell their own accessory.

There’s a few resources available to get people started on using the boards: a forum for general support and questions, and a wiki containing links to datasheets, schematics, and other more permanent documentation that people will find useful. Adafruit also has available a snazzy hackerboard page with tons of info, well-documented tutorials, and nice photos to boot.

One other point of note about the hacker board is that you can install a native gcc toolchain on it, so you don’t need to configure/install a cross-compiler on your host PC to develop for it. Heck, it’s got a 454 MHz CPU and plenty of disk space, so why not? Adafruit has a tutorial on how to install the compiler using a downloadable self-extracting script and a USB dongle. I’ve also heard rumors that an OpenEmbedded port is coming to the board soon, so stay tuned.

If you do end up purchasing a board and participating in the beta, please do contribute to the fora and wikis with your feedback. As always, happy hacking!

This page is a collection of mini-tutorials on doing stuff with the Chumby Hacker Board (for brevity we will refer to it as the CHB)! The CHB 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!

Power supplies – How to power your Chumby Hacker board!
Serial port – How to connect to the serial terminal port for shell access
Compiler – Installing the Falconwing GCC toolchain
Accessing i2c – Connecting to i2c chips including the on-board accelerometer!

More to come soon!

Chumby Hacker Board – Beta. 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 Beta release, just for the hackers! The CHB is not in any way officially supported by Chumby Industries! Chumby has generously offered a Forum and Wiki where they will try to share information but there is absolutely no tech support or guarantee that the CHB will meet your project needs. Please do not contact Chumby directly either by email or phone for help with your CHB. If you have questions, please post to their forums to receive help from others and the occasional assistance from a CHB developer.

Whats so great about it anyhow? Well! We have a list!

• Freescale iMX.233 processor running at 454 MHZ
• 64 MB onboard RAM
• Comes with 512MB uSD card with 100 MB Linux installation all ready to go
• Dimensions are 3.9″ (100mm) x 2.4″ (60mm) x 0.75″ (20mm)
• 3.3V I/O pins can talk to most sensors, motor drivers, etc. No struggling with 1.8V levels.
• Low power, fanless design draws only (200?) mA at 5V
• Built-in Lithium Ion/Polymer battery charger and 5V boost converter for portable projects
• Three USB ports!
• 1W mono speaker amplifier (0.1″ JST onboard connector)
• Microphone input (0.05″ JST onboard connector)
• LCD controller with 2mm output port
• 3.5mm A/V output jack with stereo audio and NTSC/PAL composite video
• Back of board has GPIO outputs on 0.1″ header spacing, plug in an Arduino proto shield!
• Quadrature encoder connections onboard
• 5-way joystick on-board
• MMA7455 3-axis +-2G to +-8G accelerometer on-board
• 3.3V TTL serial port for easy shell access
• Full GCC toolchain is ready for you to download and get crackin’!
• Schematics, Gerbers and original layout files are at the Wiki

You’ll want to pick up a 5V switching power supply, a 3.3v FTDI cable and an A/V cable to get started.

Want some more information? Check out our Getting Started with the Chumby Hacker Board tutorial page which will show you how to get booted, connected and read data from the on-board triple-axis accelerometer in an evening. Wow!

In the Adafruit store now!

3.5mm A/V Cable – 6′ – Often called ‘camcorder cables’ – these are standard 3.5mm audio cables that have 3 signals split out into RCA jacks. 6 feet long! Perfect for usage with your Chumby Hacker Board.

NEW PRODUCT – 5V 2000mA switching supply – Need a lot of 5V power? This switching supply gives a clean regulated 5V output at up to 2000mA. 110 or 240 input, but this charger comes with standard US/Japan/Canadian prongs. If you live in another country, you can pick up a ‘figure 8′ cable at any hardware store for a few $

This cable terminates with a 3.5mm-3.8mm OD, 1.3mm ID positive tip connector. These are used on PSPs and Chumby hacker boards and work great for either. If you want to use this for your projects you can pick up a matching jack or splice on whatever connector you wish.