1 (edited by chuckda4th 2008-05-05 18:35:55)

Topic: Alarm functionality when Chumby isn't "online"

Okay, so missed a flight this morning partially since my chumby decided to not work last night and I no longer have another alarm clock.  Apparently the alarm on my cell phone is worthless.

My chumby's been working wonderfully the past bunch of months since the major updates a while ago (I think it was when it came out of "beta").  I use it as an alarm clock every morning that I'm not on the road for work.  Last night for some reason it decided to stop connecting to my wifi properly.  I reset my wifi, and my laptops still connected and worked fine, but I couldn't get the chumby to connect.  I rebooted the chumby multiple times, and tried reconnecting a bunch of times in between reboots.  Sometimes it would give me an error indicating it couldnt resolve an IP address, but most of the time it simply said it couldn't find chumby.com.  I gave up when I realized there was no way to set the alarm without it connecting to the internet, and I had to be awake in 4 hours.

So, my request...make it so its possible to still use the alarm clock functionality even if the chumby can't connect to the servers for whatever reason, be it the internet connection being down, or whatever else.  Even if the thing can't get widgets or anything, you should still be able to use it as an alarm.  If my Internet goes down, I still have to wake up the next morning.


I'll open a ticket with support on why its not working if it isn't when I arrive back home, but in the meantime I wanted to at least make this request.


Thanks


UPDATE - Sorry, I just realized this should be in the "Software Issues" section.  I was going to delete and re-post, but can't find any way to delete.

Re: Alarm functionality when Chumby isn't "online"

I'll post an enhancement request to Product Management, although I think they already have this request in the queue.

3 (edited by ChumbyWumby 2008-05-23 09:20:31)

Re: Alarm functionality when Chumby isn't "online"

I just wanted to check on the status of this.  I took delivery of my Chumby last night and absolutely love it BUT my WiFi connection dropped (a router issue -- VZ giving me a new one this week) and I had my morning alarm set to a streaming station and as a result the alarm did not go off!  Thankfully I kept the alarm on my Blackberry set as a backup.  Is there a way to have it default to an alert tone or internal sound if the net connection goes down in the middle of the night?

I absolutely love this thing and the community that is popping up around it!  Thanks for all your help.

Re: Alarm functionality when Chumby isn't "online"

That's in the next firmware/CP update - we're adding an optional low-level backup alarm that's designed to be immune to the issues that can go wrong with the complexity (and inherent unreliability due to the dependence upon the network) that the alarm subsystem currently supports.

You may not enjoy what you hear (it becomes a loud beep instead of your favorite internet radio station), but at least you'll be awake.

Re: Alarm functionality when Chumby isn't "online"

Thanks, Duane.  Glad to hear you guys are on top of this.  I am indifferent as to the actual sound the alarm makes upon going off during a network failure so long as it wakes me up.  This will be a HUGE reliability improvement.

Looking forward to it.  Keep up the great work!