Chumby is a small, wifi-enabled linux hardware device is designed to be hacked and changed by its owners. The device has a 350MHz ARM controller, 32MB SDRAM, 64 MB Nand Flash Rom, a 320×240 3.5 inch touch LCD screen, two speakers, audio output, a microphone, and two USB ports. Chumby also has a squeeze sensor. All of this is housed within a soft, sqeezable shell about the size of a coconut.
It was announced a year ago at Foo camp, and the company gave out about 500 of the first generation devices. Users register the device on the Chumby home page and connect the device to their network via wifi. Once registered, content widgets are added – so the Chumby may include a news widget, flickr widget, etc.
Now, a year later, the company has made upgrades to the hardware and sofware that makes up the device, and say they will make it available for sale in a couple of months. The biggest change is that Chumby now runs Flash Lite 3, which is the first mobile version of Flash to support streaming audio and video. Users can now run music or video over the Internet and play it on the Chumby. The Chumby will be sold for $179.95, fully delivered.
The company has 23 employees and is headquartered in San Diego. They raised just over $5 million from OATV, Avalon Ventures and Masthead Venture Partners in December 2006.
This thing is so cool! I want one! It’s like a geeky furby!
I want one for my Christmas stocking!
cute name/logo
More info on the specs is over at http://www.chri...y-reveals-.html – Mike, you beat me!
I would have sworn this was vaporware…still an expensive alarm clock though
Es increíble! Les doy 2 opciones: o me dan uno o me regresan a la infancia para poder pedirle a mis padres que me compren uno. Ustedes eligen.
a person could use this to quickly check the weather/news/ect
and if there was some kind of mini keyboard search the net
i don’t know – but i see this product flopping.
uh what does it do? Why do I need one? Seems kinda lame but cute.
Chumby the next Champ .. Chumby is an awesome gadget and I hope everyone that gets one has a great experience with it.
Hmm, it seems my psp with hacked firmware does more and it was cheaper.
I picked up a Chumby at Foo Camp last year and was giddy on the ride home at the thought of tinkering with it.
But then it turned out I could actually *do* anything with (unless I wanted to write a Flash app and upload it through some painful process) and the built-in app was pretty lame on arrival. As an end-product, it failed because it had no functionality. As a development platform, it failed because it was a difficult process with very poor tools.
I haven’t upgraded the software yet, but unless they’ve fixed these issues, they have a major problem.
edit:
… it turned out I could NOT actually do anything with it…
(where’s the “edit” comment button
For the same price I could probably hotglue a PDA into a tickleme elmo and have something more functional and not tethered to a power cord.
The genesis of this product is pretty obvious, though: “What if you could actually hack your Hacky Sack(tm)?”
Exactly what is the point of “Chubby”?
looks great ~~
I would like for it to make food for me.
For those of you who like this, “get it,” want one, thanks. Stay tuned, coming soon.
For those who wonder what the point of this is, I tried to address this a year ago:
http://chumby.w...ted-the-chumby/
You still may not agree, but FWIW.
:^)
Anyone who got one of our early alpha prototypes, and complains that it was very limited, ummmm, didn’t we mention at the time that it was *alpha* hardware? — should be judged on what works, not on what doesn’t work, i.e., it was an early “proof of concept,” not a finished product. And, by that standard, people who understood what this stage means *loved” it. If we thought it was done, we would have charged for chumbys not given them away. If anyone has a problem with the final product, something that we have declared suitable for sale and that someone has paid for, then I *really* care to hear about that. The new chumby needs to be judged on its own merits — it now has a much better user interface, runs streaming video and audio, more content, and there will be more capabilities for users (non-Flash developers) to cofigure and create widgets.
Carping about the limitations of a free prototype seems ungrateful at best. But…whatever…wait until all the teenagers in your neighborhood have one, check it out, and then let us all know what you think.
Steve Tomlin
CEO
Chumby Industries, Inc.
Steve: GET A KEYBOARD ONTO THE DEVICE.
literally everyone wants that. quit trying to “educate” people. give them what they want.
Good points Steve, though maybe a little rough. Those with poor feedback for the alpha HW were obviously not intended to have one.
wag, i don’t want a keyboard, sorry.
Could someone please clarify whether Chumby supports Flash Lite 2.1, or this mythical Flash Lite 3 that Duncan seems to have created?
I would like to see more OEM relationships, so that companies could take the core of a Chumby, and embed it within other enclosures for other targeted/ niche applications.
Steve;
I agree with you… but remember the infamous acronym “PR”
A simple search on Adobe’s site for “Flash Lite 3″ shows that it was announced by Adobe this last February for deployment in the first half of 2007, so it’s not a myth.
Yes, the production chumby runs Flash Lite 3.
There’s no evidence that “everyone” wants a keyboard – however, the device has USB keyboard drivers in the kernel, so the folks that want a keyboard can simply plug one into one of the external USB ports.
I’ve wanted one of these since they were first announced. I routinely check the site but other than what seemed to be a slight site redesign the chumby itself never seemed to be getting any nearer to me being able to buy one.
I did attempt to get one of the betas by telling them that unless they wanted to leave North Dakota out of the loop they should let me have one to play with. That didn’t seem to work though. And now I’ve moved across the river to Minnesota. Bah.
For the record, I wouldn’t want a keyboard on my Chumby if and when I ever get one.
Eh, this could compete with Nokia’s N800 to some extent.
I actually got one Chumby, and I must said it’s a visionnary product. Still not perfect, but the idead of the touch screen is great. And yes, developping for the Chumby, is easy.
The only issue, in my view: external design, especially from an European point of view . Make it look sexy, and it will be a killer
Sorry, as a Chumby employee, I find it disheartening to hear someone complain a year later about a free alpha prototype device who didn’t even make the effort to install the firmware update.
As far as tools go, at that Foo conference, we provided a CD with the full source code and the toolchain and libraries. There are even full instructions on our wiki about how to run widgets *without* uploading them to our site. We have even provided several other programming languages – Python, Ruby, Java, etc – for people that don’t want to run Flash.
It’s a shame that Lex didn’t simply return the device to us so we could have given to one of the several thousand other people that told us they wanted to make the effort develop for the device.
Maybe it’s “bad PR” to call someone out on this, but hopefully the community would rather have some honest dialog than some condescending grovelling from some PR hack.
Steve, I sincerely wish you loads of luck on this latest revision and with the final product. As I alluded to in my original post, the Chumby certainly captured my imagination as both a hacker/developer and an end-user.
Please consider my original post above as honest feedback. Your notion of “ungratefulness” is misplaced: the prototypes were not a gift, they were intended as a means of eliciting useful feedback for product development (which I did provide to your team last year). You would be well-served to heed any negative feedback on your product, and not dismiss it or say you don’t care simply because it’s not the final product. That’s the whole point of a prototype, isn’t it: To uncover problems before the final build?
When an intended customer gives bad feedback, you should say “please tell me more.” You don’t have to follow his suggestions, but it is important to at least listen.
—
@bdb “Those with poor feedback for the alpha HW were obviously not intended to have one.”
That’s terrible advice! You’re saying people who give bad feedback should not have been asked for feedback to begin with?? Ridiculous.
I was lucky enough to get one of the few prototypes and even after the hardware hiccups I encountered (there is an “alpha prototype” sticker on the front for a reason), I can’t wait for the final release.
It’s been sitting on my desk at work for ~2 months and I’ve explained its utility to more than a few puzzled project managers, but more importantly I’ve gathered a HUGE list of ideas for usages from our strategy, creative and engineering folks. We service a number of Fortune 500 companies and a number of them have expressed serious interest into having a presence on this platform.
The whole “it only does what you write a widget to do” is expressly why I am stoked about the upcoming release. I threw together a set of PHP and AS classes to handle basic data handling in a couple of hours and have found the platform as a whole to be -really- flexible.
I dont get it..is it supposed to be cute? Aside from hobbyists, what’s the value to the consumer?
Wow. The Chumby CEO and employee have not done themselves any favors with their replies to this thread. No need to defend or retaliate..be willing to bend, don’t break.
Lex,
Don’t want to belabor this, and sorry if I’m grumpy and “un-PR” about the topic, but the prototypes were expensive for a start-up and were offered with the very specific and stated quid pro quo that people who took them o requested them needed to be willing to do something of value for us in return — hack it, write widgets for it, play with it and blog about it, provide *informed* feedback after some reasonable expereice with it, whatever. We also made it a point to say that if someone decided they really weren’t interested in doing anything with their chumby or didn’t have the time (completely understandable), to please return it to us and we’d find other hands for it (and several people did this). Would’ve been delighted with constructive and informed negative feedback based upon some reasonable level of experience with the prototype. Minimally we hoped that alpha-prototype recipients would at least take the 5-10 minutes to download the firmware patch to enable their chumby to reliably connect to the network. If you did this and connected to the Chumby Network then I think you would have discovered singificant functionality. After all, the chumby is a *connected* device, not a standalone device. If you never connected it to the network, then I agree, it’s completely useless and pointless — I mean who wants to spend this amount of money for a simple clock? But this just isn’t the point of Chumby at all. If you did connect it, play around with it and offered us thoughtful feedback, then *I’m* the one who should be grateful to you, and sorry for responding with this tirade if you did — but from your post, I don’t sense that this happened.
So you’re right in the sense that “ingratitude” is the probably the wrong word, but there was an expected and explicit, though certainly non-binding, commercial understanding on the part of alpha recipients. If someone took one and then did nothing with it, or even make much of an attempt to do anything with it, didn’t return it (we’re even willing to pay return postage) and then criticizes it when they didn’t even avail themselves of its early functionality, I don’t know what to call that.
Okay, no more axe to grind. If you’d like to return your original prototype, let us know and we’ll send you a self-addressed postage-paid box for it. Still lots of people who would want this. If you’d like to download the software patch, it’s still available from a link on the front page of our Web site — and I really hope you will do this. Would still be interested in your constructive and informed feedback if you do. Regardless, I do hope that you won’t continue to publicly criticize a product that you essentially didn’t even “plug in.” The alpha prototype was far from perfect — but it was an alpha prototype. People are right to be pretty excited about the new chumby. It’s very cool and greatly improved from the original crude prototype and, we believe, a heck of a value for consumers given what it does for the money — essentially an open IPTV-enabled Linux computer with a very simple and friendly interface. And if someone happens to be a Flash programmer or a hardware or software hacker, it should be a dream.
I guess all I’m saying is to please keep an open mind about the product given the presumably self-imposed limitations of your experience with it.
Yes, the upload process is so horrific in painful. One has to browse for a file, click on the file, then press upload!!! OH THE HUMANITY!!!! SO PAINZFUL!!!!!
‘The Chumby will be sold for $179.95, fully delivered.’
What, as opposed to partially delivered?
Does anyone have one of these? We’ve been trying to see if our FrameChannel tool (which was created for wireless picture frames) can work with this device. If anyone has a Chumby, we’d love some help testing this. We’ve tried to get one but have been unable to at this point.
Hi Steve,
First of all: many congrats with the chumb. It’s cute, it’s original and it’s realy appealing. IOW: could have a bright future … Just one thought…. I’m no thech geek, but I was wondering: why no small (web)cam into the device? Ok I understand it’s possible by USB, but it could have been that more cool if a chumb was able to “observe” it’s environment whenever it (or he/she?) wanted to do so …. or am I just dreaming now ?
Marc
@Ivan Pope
The $179.95 price includes the shipping and handling.
@marc
I guess we thought it was a bit creepy to have a bedside computer with a webcam built-in – however, we’ve built (but not yet tested) USB webcam drivers into the kernel. There are all sorts of things we could have built into the device but we had to draw the line somewhere and instead provided expansion through USB.
“it was a bit creepy to have a bedside computer with a webcam” …. depends on what (and how much) one wanna show
but I can follow your view perfectly…
BTW … Just wanna repeat myself: what a wonderful product (or shall I say idea?) for the new generatation… this could mean a lot more fun then the iPhone … after all one can make a phone call with a chumb as well I guess
)
“after all one can make a phone call with a chumb as well I guess ”
is Skype possible (or some other public phone service) ?
yeah looks – like a older technology re- packaged …
– Runs Linux (large learning curve)
– would be better if it ran Ubuntu – but still more adoptable with XP or CE
– would be better with mutitouch and bigger HD.
– Basically a poorly designed – under featured palm pilot pillow thing
- Yeah, why don’t you guys have an HDMI output and a 42 firewire ports?
- Would be better if it could play Gamecube cartridges
- 800gig hard drive would be a nise fit
- why not make dos be is usable for it? HUH?!?!
I’m dissapated.
Very cool device. However, I wonder how it will compete with comparable sideshow devices coming out in the $80 – $150 range. Also for $179 you would think it would be cordless.
(In the emporer from star wars voice)
I’m sure the Chumby will be quite operational by the time the final SDK arrives.
Im curious about the pricing….
For instance Nintendo makes money on the DS selling it for 130.00 USD. The DS has 2 QVGA touch screens slightly small than the Chumby’s and a rechargable battery where the Chumby needs still needs to be teathered to the wall. I know Steve in his post was pretty adamant about how hot this device will be wth the teen market but i have to believe that with the Wii, DS, Helio and other options at close to the same price i don’t see them picking the chumby over these other devices.
If the Chumby price was dropped say sub 80.00 USD then i see a market for it. I think between the price, being non carry-able and non rechargable it hurts the device
I guess we’ll see — it’s a lot different than all of these other devices you mention but agree that it competes for “share of wallet”. RE: pricing, what drives consumer electronics pricing is volume, volume, volume. We’ve done what we can as a company to make chumby affordable by essentially taking no margin on it, i.e., selling it through as close as we can to our costs.
We’re definitely not a handheld game machine, definitely not a phone — and we’re always connected to the Net, and we play streaming video. It is our hope and expectation that owning a chumby makes your other devices better, e.g., you can plug your iPod into a chumby to turn it in a “boombox” or radio. But I think people will have to experience Chumby, and we’ll have to do a better job of explaining it, for the differentiation and value to be clear. Fortunately a lot of people seem to be “getting it” and understanding where it fits in their life and what a chumby can do for them.
Steve,
what about a story, that does not need to get sold !
Lets look at touchscreen / Game console market for fun device (not hard core players):
Games + Wifi = Nintendo (although not hackable)
You’re targeting: 100$ Laptop + Web 2.0 interface (no camera included yet)
You have Linux, because cheaper, Apple seems to be also a competitor, but is far away with their target price and target consumer group – e.g. iphone, mac book mini, etc.
So you’d either sell quickly to Nintendo or make it real Web.2.0. I.e. include high resolution camera (3 mp) and microphone. Get kids to upload their stuff !
The kids will buy the story: “I can become a reporter with chumby and publish immediately up to my homepage in the internet !”. The parents will pay at most 200 – 220 bugs (including camera – and everything work great!), to put it under the christmas tree and have their kid become famous or at least productive.
The hackers are only interested, if this device is cheaper, than something else they can hack, but gives them the same. E.g. XBox in the early days.
So thats your maximum price, the rest you can make with the internet page, that surely would by a myspace for kids and come along really cool.
You don’t believe what my kids do with my digital camera and its video function in the back of my car, while I’m driving – just unbelievable. All they need, is an upload button !
What about another version for adults ? LOL
I can follow Libor. Me to I’m missing a part of a story at the front end to run it to a broad succes. Hacking, OK but how many of our kids have interest in anything else about fun, gaming and most of all social networking. I don’t believe in the hacking as a driver to sames. But by adding a camera, a social network could turn this cute Chumby into some kind of buddy-extension to all the youtubes, myspaces and msn’s.
By building (or dealing) at the backend to such a social site where the chumby, once connected and logged in, directly comes into a buddy-friends group, would made it really fun if possible to upload videoshots without an add-on cam.
Or maybe you should work-out this idea with a special gift-package: chumby+cheap webcam. Might even has that advantage, over one built-in, that Chumby and the separate camera don’t have to look into the same direction
Personally I think the idea of a Chumby as a multifunction hardware front-end of a social network has a good chance to catch on …. But then, easy video generation and upload is a must …
Oh…I get it. It’s a jellyfish with tentacles!
Why is Andrew “bunnie” Huang, VP Hardware Engineering and Founder of Crumby, firing an assault rifle on YouTube?
http://www.yout...h?v=OMXeDmae4uA
Why is Ken Steele, Principal Software Architect and Founder of Crumby, shooting human profiles with a 9mm pistol?
http://www.yout...h?v=EATE9756NuI
I’m concerned…are we going to be enslaved and forced to work in Chumby labor camps?
Don’t drink the Kool-Aid folks…resist the Chumby!
文章好啊。我转载一下。是不是博主原产的啊。用不用注明出处.