51 (edited by steelpaw 2013-02-23 14:53:45)

Re: Possible futures

linden12 wrote:

Just wanted to speak up for the widgets!

And, once again, I'm extremely grateful to Duane for keeping the Chumbys going, and more than happy to donate.

Same here.
I, too, was more of a widget user rather than a music user. Chumby was the device that put me on to internet radio, but over the years it became superceded for that purpose by other devices (Roku, Sonos).
However, there was (and is) nothing like it for serving up 'glanceable' information - weather, headlines, Google calendar, email etc without the user having to do anything. This last bit is what so many non-Chumby people don't seem to appreciate. They say "I don't get it, why can't you just check [whatever] on your phone. That's what I do." This last sentence is always said with a certain smug exasperation, as if I'm some kind of fool who hasn't yet realised I can do more with my smart phone than just wait for calls.
The point is that most of this information is 'nice to know' rather than 'need to know'. If a particular news story, weather condition or email is of pressing and urgent relevance to me, then of course I will seek it out on my phone or computer rather than waiting for Chumby to cycle around to it. But most of it isn't, in which case having Chumby show it to me without me asking for it is great.
I also had a lot of clock widgets that I enjoyed as much for their decorative and entertainment value as for their practical use.

Re: Possible futures

Hello Duane and thanks for all!
Here are a few thoughts, I might be completely wrong:

- Chumby users seem to be pretty loyal and passionate about the device. That's the biggest asset you bought IMHO. On the other hand the longer you wait, the more users you will lose, so I would not keep them in the dark. Maybe the current clock should include a message or a link saying why it all changed.
- for the same reason and that's very personal, but I would keep Flash as a programming language: you could reuse existing widgets (and it's also the language I like to code in ;-)). It's a language that is slowly fading away, so it's a tough decision.
- the code for the dashboard should be available. In general I would like my chumby to be even more open and rely less on a central server. So the suggestion to cache some widgets is appealing.
-  do you have a way to buy a stock of chumbies devices ? You could sell them refurbished on the website to generate some revenue.
- yes for a monthly subscription or support based revenue. If you go completely open source and decentralized, you should be able to save a lot on server costs.

In short, it all depends if you want to completely reinvent the system or just keep it running and cover the costs. Personally I do not think people would mind keeping the system as is with an aging programming language. You will not get rich but there should be enough to cover the costs. I would go for a simple webpage/forum with donation and/or subscription model and let the users do what they want (the original idea of the chumby?).

I will certainly contribute with widget and subscription.
Good luck!

Re: Possible futures

I like the idea of having the widgets via peer-2-peer (bittorrent!?), to reduce the traffic on the central servers. In this distributed world it would be possible for chumby to have a long life.

Re: Possible futures

I think the first order of business should be to ensure the costs stay under control to ensure there is future at all. This means sticking with what exists as much as possible until more resources are available. For instance, Flash might be unpopular(judging from posts on this forum) but porting everything to something would be labour intensive while not benefiting the majority of users.

To reduce bandwidth and processing costs it would seem worthwhile to consider a tiered architecture. The root of the system would remain the central server owned and operated by Blue Octy LLC. Below that would be caching proxy servers that could be run by community members in either a public or private manner. For example if someone had spare bandwidth/CPU capacity that could be donated by accepting to cache and proxy part of the traffic destined for the central server. If run in a private manner it would help to reduce load by having a single host contacting the central server instead of all the devices on the premises(most folks here seem to have multiple devices).

On the financial side, I am skeptical of the chances of advertising of making any significant contribution. Subscriptions seem acceptable and probably the only reasonable option in the beginning. The long term hope would of course be to get the platform to a point where the sale of service to device manufacturers becomes possible but that is unfortunately a long way away.

Thank you for all your efforts Duane and Doktor Jones !

Re: Possible futures

Just having effective caching on the device for things like the control panel with effective HTTP "if-modified-since" support would go a long way to reducing that cost.  Some of that's tied to the network stack of Flash Lite (I implemented that once at Palm, and it's not much fun), but it could be done.

56 (edited by cfg83 2013-03-02 23:19:38)

Re: Possible futures

Nico -

I like the way you think.

Nico wrote:

I think the first order of business should be to ensure the costs stay under control to ensure there is future at all. This means sticking with what exists as much as possible until more resources are available. For instance, Flash might be unpopular(judging from posts on this forum) but porting everything to something would be labour intensive while not benefiting the majority of users.

Yes, establishing existing services is priority #1.  After you get a healthy Chumby then you can talk about a Chumby 2.0.

To reduce bandwidth and processing costs it would seem worthwhile to consider a tiered architecture. The root of the system would remain the central server owned and operated by Blue Octy LLC. Below that would be caching proxy servers that could be run by community members in either a public or private manner. For example if someone had spare bandwidth/CPU capacity that could be donated by accepting to cache and proxy part of the traffic destined for the central server. If run in a private manner it would help to reduce load by having a single host contacting the central server instead of all the devices on the premises(most folks here seem to have multiple devices).

Sounds like seti@home ( http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/ ).

I am speaking without "deep knowledge" of the setup, but would it make sense to bring the lowest bandwidth services on-line first?  Kind of like going after the low-hanging fruit, but in this case the low-costing fruit.  Maybe throttle the high-bandwidth services.

On the financial side, I am skeptical of the chances of advertising of making any significant contribution. Subscriptions seem acceptable and probably the only reasonable option in the beginning. The long term hope would of course be to get the platform to a point where the sale of service to device manufacturers becomes possible but that is unfortunately a long way away.

What is the number of worldwide users?  I look at this quote from Duane :

chumbysphere forum -> Chumby.com -> End of Chumby as we know it... -> Post #10
http://forum.chumby.com/viewtopic.php?id=8457

If I build a replacement system, it will not cost $5K/month.  My guess it will be in the low hundreds - my goal is under $200/month.

What you're seeing with the current system is a "professional" system, with full analytics, the complete build system, monitoring, backups, the whole source control history back to day one, system logs, internal files and documents, etc even though in some cases the servers that server this stuff have been shut down.

At $4400/month, with 40K active units in the field, it's actually only $0.11 per unit per month, which is pretty low.

Assuming 100% support from the user base :

    ($200*12 months) / 40,000 users => $0.06 dollars per year.

Now, let's assume 10% support from the user base and twice the monthly cost :

    ($400*12 months) / 4,000 users => $1.20 dollars per year

Now, that's still ridiculously low.  For that price I think we could easily get the "true believers" to shell out $10 or more per year.

(Pessimistic?) Question: How many unique people are posting on this forum since chumby went into "limp mode"?  That is the initial donation base.

Thank you for all your efforts Duane and Doktor Jones !

Indeed.

cfg83

Re: Possible futures

While it would be nice to have, on device caching should be looked into carefully since as far as I understand the devices were never meant to hold much offline data. In major change carries the risk of unforseen consequences. If it is possible to implement without too much of a hassle it would make a great addition.

Bringing low-bandwidth services online first might or might not work depending on what are the popular features(and their bandwidth usage) as well as how much background traffic there exists to run the whole system. If the latter causes the bulk of the load,  the services cannot really be run in a low-bandwidth mode. I suggested the ability to run public/private proxies so that if I want to use some more resource intensive feature I can do so without pushing too much cost onto Duane. It also gives something to the portion of the userbase wishing for an offline solution to avoid a repeat of the closing down scenario. It would not be exactly what they wanted but at least they could keep running their devices independently with some level of functionality. I am a widget person myself.

Going from 5000$/month to 200$/month is a big drop. I really hope that a drastic reduction in operating costs is feasible as without it keeping the service run will probably be very difficult. In terms of paying user base, I feel 10% is on the (very) optimistic side. It´s not that a couple of dollars per year is a big deal for most people who can afford Chumbies but rather that the big jump is from free to non-free. That´s a much bigger barrier than a yearly fee of 10$ versus 5$. Furthermore, you need to consider to what extent the small paying minority will be subsidising the service of the non-paying users. True believers will probably be willing to pay a decent amount for their service but might not want to fork out for others. On the flipside, shutting out the majority of the userbase is likely a bad idea as well. Tricky situation.

If you want to look at user statistics for the forum you can go here http://forum.chumby.com/userlist.php and filter by registration date.

Re: Possible futures

Local caching over USB drive would be clever. Proxys are another got step forward. But first getting rid of unliked traffic, like Duane does,  is a good starting point.

59

Re: Possible futures

I'm also a widget rather than a radio user. With just the calendar widget on the stub server my Chumby has essentially become useless to me, so I've currently got it switched off (no point adding to Duane's bandwidth costs right now).

My suggestion would be to concentrate on getting a subscription model up and running as a priority over reducing bandwidth. That would allow users who desperately want their functionality back to put their money where their mouth is. Then the task of reducing bandwidth can begin in earnest, with a corresponding reduction in the subscription pricing over time.

For example, I would be happy to pay $50 tomorrow to get my Chumby running again, with its widgets, for the next 12 months. By the time that subscription is over, I would hope that the next year would only cost $25, or even $10.

Above all I think it's important to get a second widget on the stub server to tell users what's happening. Otherwise there will be a lot of users who just give up and put their Chumby in the "drawer of obsolete tech". Although reducing the number of users means a reduction in bandwidth and hosting costs, it also means that the remaining users are paying a larger proportion of the fixed costs. If too many users leave the system in the short term, it could potentially affect the longer term pricing.

Re: Possible futures

That is exactly my point.  We are going to start losing 'clients' sooner than later.  And yes, there are a few boxes out there that can do the Chumby thing.  Believe it or not, the Sony Dash is still selling in my local electronics store for $88

The Chumby is fun and a novelty, but the single channel will make alot of people do just that, put it in the drawer.

I myself still have 2 on, since all I ran on then was the same clock and weather, clock 20 minutes, weather 1 minute, so my display is almost the same  smile

But we need to reel in the subscribers now, or at LEAST see if there really is interest in being subscribers.  Actively ask users with a widget on there screen to go to a web page and VOTE, take a poll.  We do not even know how many really even know it died, and that we need a money model.

61 (edited by pkjunction 2013-03-06 11:33:13)

Re: Possible futures

I've been using a subscription service for my MythTV schedules for several years, since the free XML TV schedules service did a Chumby like dump. Several people not wanting to see the service die bought the code and started a non-profit organization to maintain the TV schedules and charge $25/year for the service. I use one subscription to the service on all of my MythTV based DVRs and it works very well.

Here is a short blurb from the ShedulesDirect website main page:

Schedules Direct is a non-profit organization whose mission is to educate the public about the benefits of Open Source Software and other free software, provide support functions for such software, and provide funding for research that facilitates the improvement or creation of Open Source Software and other free software for the benefit of the public at large.

Maybe they could help in this situation

62 (edited by djfake 2013-03-07 12:18:39)

Re: Possible futures

Chumby is an amazing alarm clock, my non-techie wife loves it. My kids - who are young but fear nothing that's tech - had a blast with it. I just love it for being a Chumby.

I imagine there is a subset of things the Chumby should do - alarm, radio, read rss feeds, weather, clock/calendar, picture viewer, etc. - that would satisfy the majority of the existing users, and keep them from bricking them. Defining that set of widgets/apps is paramount.

If it became a stand alone device, that may work too. I just hope Chumby doesn't go away!

63 (edited by cmwpdx 2013-03-08 15:33:48)

Re: Possible futures

Thank you Duane.

For now, radio remains key for me.  Shoutcast would be great, am I correct the manual add station option is still alive (I'll try this weekend).

In future, a stripped bare early Android rom running from USB that doesn't touch the firmware, ala Nook Color N2A, would be nice, even if all it supports is really simple apps.  I have a rooted Virgin Mobile Venture with a same-resolution screen, and it is fine for the various clock, radio and streaming apps.  From the interwebs:

•The absolute minimum requirements for Android were originally a 200 MHz processor, 32 MB of RAM, and 32 MB of storage.
•Out of the box, Android is incompatible with ARMv4 or lower; ARMv5 or higher is needed to run native code without modifications.

1.6 spec: 
http://static.googleusercontent.com/ext … .6-cdd.pdf

Re: Possible futures

cmwpdx wrote:

Shoutcast would be great, am I correct the manual add station option is still alive (I'll try this weekend).

SHOUTcast should be completely operational on all devices.  If not, please let me know.

Re: Possible futures

I wholeheartedly agree with all who proposed a subscription model. I am a kind of "serial startupper" and therefore quite familiar with various business models (this guy is a myth): I believe that, reading the many forum posts, it should be more than feasible to have a limited group of "early supporters" who are willing to pay a little bit more.

Some kind of freemium model could also be used: all who're happy with just a few widgets can continue use their Chumbies the way they're now, others will pay a yearly subscription.
Of course some smart a** out there will have to run a few figures on this, but it's true that it should happen before the existing user base starts throwing its chumbies to eBay... Then it would be too late.

Again: I am fairly new to your effort, but thank you, Duane. It's not every day that somebody keeps alive such a project :-)

Re: Possible futures

Hey guys, long time chumby owner here. I would like to thank Duane for all his hard work.

I just came here to suggest doing a kickstarter or an indiegogo campaign. I know I would definitely kick in some money and I am sure it could get some tech media attention, too.

Re: Possible futures

Whilst I understand the goodwill behind suggestions for kickstarter or similar campaigns, I have some reservations about them. To some extent, I feel that their potential for causing unhappiness may outweigh their fundraising benefits.
Kickstarter has a tendency to lead to unhappiness because at least some contributors seem to see it as a shop. They pay their money, so they want their fully-functional thing, and they want it delivered on time. Their tolerance for the delays, glitches and bugs that are an almost inevitable part of startups is minimal.
At this time, there is nothing that Blue Octy can deliver in return for contributions, other than the possibility of a new service. I am concerned that for every rusted-on Chumby fan who understands this and just wants to make a contribution in order to get the ball rolling, there will be two or three or ten less-informed Chumby owners who think that paying into Kickstarter will get them a service. When that service doesn't eventuate as quickly as they would like, they will become angry and resentful and start brooding about their 'lost' ten dollars.
By the time there is a subscription model service ready to go, these people won't want to pay for it because they will have convinced themselves that somehow they have been cheated. Furthermore, they will go online and whine about it, which may alarm other potential subscribers and make them reluctant to sign up.
Thus, my concern is that taking contributions now may actually reduce the number of people prepared to sign up for a sustainable subscription model in the future.

Re: Possible futures

steelpaw is absolutely correct about why I'm not currently accepting any contributions.

As soon as money is involved, things can go off the rails very quickly.

I'm making progress, but until I can deliver on a firm schedule, I'm keeping money out of the equation.

Re: Possible futures

Thanks for setting up the Stub service. I knew Chumby had closed it's store awhile ago, but had no idea all employees were laid off in 2011 until seeing the lone Star Clock on my Insignia Chumby clone and visiting chumby.com. I had about 40 widgets running on device, and would like the ability to see them again. Understanding it was very expensive to host this service, my first suggestion is to have advertising run every few minutes on the device. If that doesn't generate enough revenue, I wouldn't mind spending up to $1 per month to display widgets on the device. Anything more, and I think you will alienate a lot of users.

Re: Possible futures

Yeah, I think Kickstarter is overrated for this.  I'd rather see Duane come up with a limited service and provide an online store for paying for "non-stub" service for those who are interested.  Setting up a storefront is so much easier now than in the past, especially with services like Stripe to handle the credit card setup.  As something with no "physical" component, I just don't see KS being effective.