Chumby
Encyclopedia
Consumer electronics
Consumer electronics are electronic equipment intended for everyday use, most often in entertainment, communications and office productivity. Radio broadcasting in the early 20th century brought the first major consumer product, the broadcast receiver...
product made by Chumby Industries, Inc.. It is an embedded computer which provides Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
and LAN
Län
Län and lääni refer to the administrative divisions used in Sweden and previously in Finland. The provinces of Finland were abolished on January 1, 2010....
access via a Wi-Fi
Wi-Fi
Wi-Fi or Wifi, is a mechanism for wirelessly connecting electronic devices. A device enabled with Wi-Fi, such as a personal computer, video game console, smartphone, or digital audio player, can connect to the Internet via a wireless network access point. An access point has a range of about 20...
connection. Through this connection, the Chumby runs various software widgets.
Roughly resembling a small clock radio, it consists of a small touch-screen with a leather and plastic exterior. It uses AC power
Mains electricity
Mains is the general-purpose alternating current electric power supply. In the US, electric power is referred to by several names including household power, household electricity, powerline, domestic power, wall power, line power, AC power, city power, street power, and grid power...
and turns off if unplugged; a 9 volt battery connector is supplied for backup power. It comes in six colors.
The Chumby was praised as open source hardware
Open source hardware
Open source hardware consists of physical artifacts of technology designed and offered in the same manner as free and open source software . Open source hardware is part of the open source culture movement and applies a like concept to a variety of components. The term usually means that...
: it is designed to be customizable by users. Wired
Wired (magazine)
Wired is a full-color monthly American magazine and on-line periodical, published since January 1993, that reports on how new and developing technology affects culture, the economy, and politics...
magazine named Chumby one of its top gadgets for 2008. Its software is mostly open source, running on Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
.
History
The Chumby premiered on August 25, 2006 at Foo CampFoo Camp
Foo Camp is an annual hacker event hosted by publisher O'Reilly Media. O'Reilly describes it as "the wiki of conferences", where the program is developed by the attendees at the event, using big whiteboard schedule templates that can be rewritten or overwritten by attendees to optimize the schedule...
and was released to around 100 alpha release testers at the event.
Shortly after Foo Camp, Chumby announced a free Chumby 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.
In July 2007, a First 50 was released to 50 random applicants, who received the next generation of Chumbys. 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. Finally, in February 2008, the commercial release was made public on the Chumby Store. In May 2008, the price was $179.95 for any one of three colors, latte, basic black, and pearl. In Japan, Chumby is available through Zyyx, Inc. as www.chumby.jp since October 23, 2008. In Australia, the Chumby is available through ISP Internode
Internode Systems
Internode, founded on 8 May 1991 by Managing Director Simon Hackett, is an Australian Internet Service Provider . The company focuses primarily on ADSL-based Internet access, but also provides business-class access , web hosting, co-location, Voice over IP, and a variety of related...
.
In November 2009 the Chumby One was released: a similar, all plastic version of the original, only available in white with a blue trim. The major difference was the hard plastic casing replacing the soft leather casement. Other changes include a slightly faster processor, only 1 USB port on the rear of the device, and inclusion of FM tuner and physical volume knob. The advantage of the plastic hard case allowed Chumby Industries to offer the Chumby One at a reduced price of $119.95.
Features
Hardware
The Chumby is designed as open source hardwareOpen source hardware
Open source hardware consists of physical artifacts of technology designed and offered in the same manner as free and open source software . Open source hardware is part of the open source culture movement and applies a like concept to a variety of components. The term usually means that...
, with schematics, PCB
Printed circuit board
A printed circuit board, or PCB, is used to mechanically support and electrically connect electronic components using conductive pathways, tracks or signal traces etched from copper sheets laminated onto a non-conductive substrate. It is also referred to as printed wiring board or etched wiring...
layouts and packaging/outerware designs available. Hardware specs are as follows
The Original Chumby
- 350 MHz ARM9-based Freescale i.MX21 controller
- 64 MB of SDRAM
- 64 MB of NAND flash ROM
- 320×240 3.5 inch touchscreen TFT LCDTFT LCDThin film transistor liquid crystal display is a variant of liquid crystal display which uses thin-film transistor technology to improve image quality . TFT LCD is one type of Active matrix LCD, though all LCD-screens are based on TFT active matrix addressing...
running at 12 frames per second - stereo 2 W speakers, an audio output, an integrated microphone
- two USB 2.0 ports
- integrated Wi-FiWi-FiWi-Fi or Wifi, is a mechanism for wirelessly connecting electronic devices. A device enabled with Wi-Fi, such as a personal computer, video game console, smartphone, or digital audio player, can connect to the Internet via a wireless network access point. An access point has a range of about 20...
- a bend sensor for squeeze-based user interface features
- motion sensor (accelerometerAccelerometerAn accelerometer is a device that measures proper acceleration, also called the four-acceleration. This is not necessarily the same as the coordinate acceleration , but is rather the type of acceleration associated with the phenomenon of weight experienced by a test mass that resides in the frame...
).
The Chumby One
- 454 MHz ARM processor
- 64 MB DDR SDRAM
- 2 GB internal microSD card (some only have 1 GB)
- 320x240 3.5" LCD color touchscreen
- 2W mono speaker
- Wi-fi connectivity (802.11 b/g)
- FM radio tuner
- Uses rechargeable lithium ion battery (not included); about one hour on a full charge
- 4" wide x 4" tall x 3.5" deep
- 1 USB 2.0 high-speed port
- Stereo headphone output
- Volume knob
- Accelerometer (motion sensor)
- ABS plastic housing
- AC adapter included
- USB ethernet compatible
- Dimmable backlight
Comparison Table ( needs to be completed )
| Comparison | Chumby One | Original | Chumby 8 | BestBuy Infocast |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price | $129.95 | Discontinued | $199.95 | Discontinued |
| Resolution | 320x240 | 800x600 | 800x600 | |
| Screen | 3.5" | 3.5" | 8" | 8" |
| Manage content channels from device | ||||
| Free subscriptions loaded and updated by chumby | No | Yes | ||
| Event scheduler UI | No | Yes | ||
| Upload photos and videos to favorite photo-sharing sites | No | Yes | ||
| External media support | Yes | SD, MMC, CF, USB | ||
| Updated sharing features | No | Yes | Yes | |
| WebKit browser (chumbrowser) | No | Yes | ||
| Accelerometer (motion sensor) | Yes | No | ||
| USB port | 1 USB 2.0 high speed port | 2 USB 2.0 high speed ports | ||
| FM radio tuner | Yes | No | No | No |
| Wi-fi connectivity (802.11 b/g) | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Processor | 454 MHz ARM processor | 350Mhx Arm9 | 800MHz Marvell ARMADA 166 | Example |
| RAM | 64 MB DDR SDRAM | 64 MB DDR2 SDRAM | 128 MB DDR2 SDRAM | Example |
| ROM | Internal microSD card firmware | 64 MB of NAND flash ROM | Internal 2GB microSD FLASH storage | Example |
Hacks
Hacking the Chumby hardware is encouraged by the manufacturer. Schematics and other hardware information may be downloaded after the user agrees to the Chumby HDK License. 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.Software
Linux kernel
The Linux kernel is an operating system kernel used by the Linux family of Unix-like operating systems. It is one of the most prominent examples of free and open source software....
. The software originally installed on the device is designed to play a set of user-customizable widgets, small Adobe Flash
Adobe Flash
Adobe Flash is a multimedia platform used to add animation, video, and interactivity to web pages. Flash is frequently used for advertisements, games and flash animations for broadcast...
animations that deliver real-time information. This is possible because an embedded version of Adobe Flash Player
Adobe Flash Player
The Adobe Flash Player is software for viewing multimedia, Rich Internet Applications and streaming video and audio, on a computer web browser or on supported mobile devices. Flash Player runs SWF files that can be created by the Adobe Flash authoring tool, by Adobe Flex or by a number of other...
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
RSS
-Mathematics:* Root-sum-square, the square root of the sum of the squares of the elements of a data set* Residual sum of squares in statistics-Technology:* RSS , "Really Simple Syndication" or "Rich Site Summary", a family of web feed formats...
feeds, and physical user interface features such as gesture recognition through squeezing the soft housing.
The software for the Chumby automatically updates when something new becomes available. The updates come from the free access to the Chumby network, and a modified BitTorrent client
BitTorrent client
BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer program developed by Bram Cohen and BitTorrent, Inc. used for uploading and downloading files via the BitTorrent protocol. BitTorrent was the first client written for the protocol. It is often nicknamed Mainline by developers denoting its official origins. Since version...
is used to upgrade the open-source portions of its firmware
Firmware
In electronic systems and computing, firmware is a term often used to denote the fixed, usually rather small, programs and/or data structures that internally control various electronic devices...
.
Multimedia limitations
Although the prototypes did not support video playback, all current (as of May 2007) retail versions use Flash LiteFlash Lite
Adobe Flash Lite is a lightweight version of Adobe Flash Player, a software application published by Adobe Systems. This version is intended for mobile phones and other portable electronic devices like Chumby and iRiver, and allows users of these devices to view multimedia content and applications...
3 which allows for Sorenson
Sorenson codec
Sorenson codec may refer to either of three proprietary video codecs: Sorenson Video, Sorenson Video 3 or Sorenson Spark. Sorenson Video is also known as Sorenson Video Codec, Sorenson Video Quantizer or SVQ...
, FLV, H.264, VP6 and On2 video playback.