The chumbilical also has some "SPI" ports on it, but they can also be reconfigured to be GPIOs, and you can do some bit-banging on that. The UART is not exposed on the chumbilical, but it is available on the core board, and it should be okay to use that because you can start sshd on chumby.

There is a kinda exposed JTAG port. It's pinned out to some test points in case you want to solder to them. Fortunately, we haven't needed a JTAG port at all for development. It was a little painful bringing up the chumby, but as a little startup company we look for ways to save money on capital equipment and software in any way that makes sense.

On a different topic, there was talk of adding a bluetooth dongle...

if anybodys interested, id whip them up a usb bluetooth/infrared/ethernet hub. small enough to fit inside chumby, but big enough to provide all three functions, and up to 3 more usb ports.

^^

dunno, cost of materials, plus say $5 for a build charge. it would run with the software, id research stuff that worked with chumby before i sold it, but the idea is to have it run natively, no faffin around.

i reckon size wise, about the size of maybe a video cassette, maybe smaller. id make it so that it would fit behind the chumby screen.

chedabob:

If you offered these, i would like one!

now all it needs is Bluetooth/ir support in the apps on the chumby

--neg

Ooh yeah, this is gonna be an excellent touchscreen remote... Actually I'd like to try and get it to mesh with a Control4 system, which uses Wifi to run you stereo and house....

Considering how small the screen is on the chumby, how likely are you going to be THAT far away from it that you can't just use the touchscreen?  That said, it would be handy in a number of situations to be able to use a remote with the chumby.  But then you'll run in the problem of just what are you sending and how should the widgets deal with it?  Touchscreens enter x,y coordinates; that's not something you can easily replicate with a remote.

And don't forget the big red  "Seen On TV" sticker.

I think an IR controller accessory would be pretty neat.

If it was something you plugged into the USB port in the back, do you think that would do the trick for you?

Building the hardware to do that won't be too difficult, I think -- the greater challenge would be writing the drivers and compiling the database of IR remote control commands. Does anybody know of a good (open) database of such things?

IrDA is a method of transmitting data over IR... its not the same as the encoding used for *most* infared remotes..  Most Irda dongles wont do remote IR....

Duane.. one note of warning...
You might run into a patent issue with logitech if you get the remote code database via the web... Not sure but i think they own something on using the web to send configuration information to a universal remote... may want to do a patent search on this

Better yet, utilize the WiFi, PSP or DS app anybody?

Coding it for PC or Mac would be easy, but I don't have any experience at coding for PSP or DS, new challenge for me

You can get USB IR ports, I use one on my media center along with a remote, they are available, search eBay for 'IR Blaster MCE'. You can usually find them with just 'IR MCE'.