Re: Are we close?

chumby008 wrote:

* So is there a plan to keep these services going?

You're experiencing the plan right now.

Would locating the parts from China be able to re-continue part sourcing / making the parts again? If this is a long term endevour I would assume it would make sense to re-invest in parts or at least agree on some sort of contract with the Manufacturer of the chmby models etc.

Many of the parts that make up the chumby are no longer manufactured, so it would require a redesign using modern and available parts.

To redesign and start making chumby devices again would take somewhere on the order of $150K to $250K.

27 (edited by chumby008 2014-05-05 16:30:37)

Re: Are we close?

Could you use a pi board inside the chumby and hook the screen up to it> or would you need specific adapters?

I ask because I've seen so many mods that can be done with the chumby, you would never had thought possible.

What sort of feature's / widget could you add> I've seen a weather widget.

Re: Are we close?

Screens of that size don't have any type of standard connectors or signal pinouts, so you'd need custom electronics.

One reason there are two versions of the Chumby Classic in the wild is that the screen vendor we were using revoked their commitment to continue to manufacture the display we were using, so we had to switch venders and redo the electronics.

29 (edited by chumby008 2014-05-06 09:30:45)

Re: Are we close?

* What about a kickstarter campaign?

* Raise ~ $150,000 for a customizable Gadget like the chumby can go a long way!

I'm sure people would be willing to spend money on the Chumby Brand if it was re-introduced as an multi-functional item. That way people with existing chumbys could continue to enjoy the name and also have the option to buy into a new Generation of it in another room.

IMO Chumby seemed like a very interesting product> but was introduced as a Fast investment with little personal investment in the product> I'm not sure on the the culture of Kickstarters, but most fail because they want to make a quick buck with little to no time investing in the actual product> One example would be a steam Golf Game that never reached it's end goal because the people behind it were'nt interested in backing it for the long term etc. But such is for those types of platforms etc.

30 (edited by steelpaw 2014-05-06 15:48:05)

Re: Are we close?

chumby008 wrote:

* What about a kickstarter campaign?

Yeah, no. This has been discussed earlier. You could review that discussion at:
http://forum.chumby.com/viewtopic.php?pid=46440#p46440
http://forum.chumby.com/viewtopic.php?pid=46416#p46416
http://forum.chumby.com/viewtopic.php?pid=45744#p45744
Most of that discussion dates from the early days of the "Chumby crisis" when the future looked rather more uncertain. Now, there would appear to be even less need for a kickstarter campaign to fund the re-emergence of a Chumby service. Duane seems to have that well under way, and once the service is tested and ready to go then a subscription model would offer a better and more sustainable funding stream.
As for manufacturing more Chumbys using kickstarter funding, that seems like a very big commitment, especially for a product that (however wonderful it may be) has already failed in the marketplace once. It's one thing for Duane to run a Chumby service on top of his day job, but quite another for him to coordinate an entire product manufacture.
And who would pay into the kickstarter? The people that already own Chumbys? Maybe not - I love the Chumby, I own five of them, I bought a fund-raising Chumby hoodie and I would pay for a subscription service but I really doubt whether I would contribute to a scheme to start manufacturing them again. And if people like me wouldn't contribute, then it seems unlikely that all those people who didn't want to buy a Chumby (or the cheaper Infocast) when they were on the market would now want to pay money for the possibility of owning one at some unspecified time in the future.

Re: Are we close?

all we have to do is get a good message across wink like these folks did this morning   (no, I haven't signed up yet, I've got two of the older models, which I love.)

with the advances that have been made, it might be easier than it was before... I've read about 3d printing being used in prototyping to both massively speed up and reduce the cost of getting those things right, for instance.  as long as we can avoid the middle/product manager mucking about what the engineers want to make.

Cleaning up any loose bits and bytes.

Re: Are we close?

* I can see it be a little more difficult with a full time job etc to work on Future Chumby Development projects...

Re: Are we close?

diamaunt wrote:

all we have to do is get a good message across wink like these folks did this morning   (no, I haven't signed up yet, I've got two of the older models, which I love.)

with the advances that have been made, it might be easier than it was before... I've read about 3d printing being used in prototyping to both massively speed up and reduce the cost of getting those things right, for instance.  as long as we can avoid the middle/product manager mucking about what the engineers want to make.

* How difficult would getting deeper involved in this type of project be?

1. It already has a client base> but for some people as mentioned in another Kickstarter topic> getting the product out fast after donating money will be some peoples concerns> which should be tolerated because fixing glitches in a product can take a year or 2 (Game console Creators ~Game stick still havn't officialy released its product yet to market and is slated for release on Amazon for Dec 2014? (Although I already own one I purchased used, and it works wonderfully so far!) I can't see why people wouldn't wait for a chumby release.

2. The fact that someone spent the time alone on the chumby brand shows the person is commited to providing decent if not future great services for it.

3. There are possibly more choices for hardware considerations> which could mean chosing hardware that is already mass produced such as the Rasberry pi mobo. Run it on a linux based sysetm or somthing.

Re: Are we close?

I love the continued enthusiasm folks show for wanting to bring Chumby back to development. But as noted above, this idea has been kicked around for years. Of course, there will undoubtedly be new Internet devices that do some things we love about the Chumby. But our Chumbys really now are technical classics that could not be re-created because of the way the Web generates income now- nothing's free. We should treasure our Chumbys like a Commodore Computer or a '57 Chevy. They'll never make them like that again.

Re: Are we close?

* I haven't seen a night radio that does what the chumby can, Revo  /Grace Digital and Lookee TV are the only touchscreen options out there, Revo and Grace digital only have radio and podcasts which are fine, but theyr'e sold as a finite product (Not customizable). The only other product that takes it further is lookee TV with Internet TV capabilities> but is generic software that assumingly rarely gets updated, so your buying something the will not function in 2-3 years possibly.

A chumby product if invested into meaningfully can succeed with a decent client base, because it could posses simple gpu an cpu chips that could be had for dirt cheap nowadays and would provide the programmers foder to make content for it> something similar to the ouya console.

* The bottom line is this> a chumby device can succeed in the market place, only it will need to be open source, so TONS of programmers can get in on making software for it such as games and widgets.

Re: Are we close?

I have a grace radio and it is great for what it does. When I first got it updates were fairly common. I can't remember the last time I got one though. I am concerned the service could die at some point, making the radio useless. My Chumbys are much more a swiss army knife. It does many things. I am ready and willing to pay a monthly fee to keep the service running. I wonder if the service will be charged per user or per Chumby. If it is per Chumby it could get expensive for some of us.  ;-)

Tar, feathers, congress. Some assembly required.

Re: Are we close?

@chumby008 - the Chumby was much of what you wish for - basically open source and lots of developers made games and widgets. Blue Octy still has the widgets. They were also used in Sony products, and they still have most of the widgets or apps posted that you may want to look over-
http://dash.dash.sel.sony.com/guide

Someone even had developed a whole site of a Chumby virtual world called Chumbyland. The whole Chumby ecosystem got very big and wonderful, with a great community of developers and hackers. Unfortunately the company folded.

Re: Are we close?

* Where is Chumby world? I havn't seen it on my device? I only have one clock screen available, and If I delete it I don't see finding another?

* I've seen the chumby weather widget> but do not know where  I can find it?

Re: Are we close?

The only widget now is the space clock. In time you may see more when the service is back in action. Now is just a stub service to give temporary conductivity for this limited service. Hang in there. There is more to come.

Owner of 3 Sony Dash, 2 Info 8.

Re: Are we close?

you will see more.  though not all widgets are still working, but that's up ot the widget authors to fix.

Cleaning up any loose bits and bytes.

Re: Are we close?

* Where do I look for widgets on the chumby 1 online or in the chumby menu somewhere?

Re: Are we close?

you have to wait for the service to come back online.

Cleaning up any loose bits and bytes.

Re: Are we close?

* I see.

Re: Are we close?

@Chumby008, it sounds like you weren't around before the stub service was all that we had, so in a nutshell, this is how it worked and I assume will work again once Duane is done bringing back the full service.

Everybody had an account on the chumby.com website that was password protected ( and separate from the forum accounts).  Once you were logged into your chumby.com account, you could see a list of all your registered devices.  There was a section of the website that had all of the Chumby apps that were available with descriptions and you would drag the apps down to a timeline for your Chumby device.  Some apps had various settings that you could customize from this screen, too, like inputting your zip code for a weather app or something like that.

It was a pretty intuitive system.  I am assuming that the same interface will be restored once Duane works out all of the details of bringing back the service.

*I know I'm leaving out a lot of what the original service used to be like just for time and space concerns.  Please, if I am misrepresenting some aspect of the way it used to work due to my not remembering correctly or if I'm leaving out your favorite part of the original service, please feel free to correct me or add to what I've written here.

Re: Are we close?

I loved the virtual chumby on my pc.   I do not expect that to comeback  sad

46 (edited by bobsz 2014-05-17 12:14:03)

Re: Are we close?

If you have an app "saved" someplace and it's just visual (clock etc.) you can find the "swf movie" you can right-click on it and "open with" your Web browser. Just make sure it's named with the swf file type. If you're a little more in to it, you can make a html file and put the swf file in it.

Re: Are we close?

Thanks for the continued updates.  Is there a mail list we can join for announcements?  I look at my space clock and it is cool, but I miss my other widgets.  Thank you for continuing to keep those tentacles moving.

Re: Are we close?

this forum is the best place for information, though there is a facebook and twitter account, it's usually only for the big things.

Cleaning up any loose bits and bytes.

Re: Are we close?

Duane wrote:

Getting back into the business of creating new Chumby units would require quite a bit of capital - somewhere north of $150K or so.  Just tooling for a case is $25K for each round.  I don't have access to the tooling for the C8, but I *might* be able to locate the C1 tooling in China, though it may no longer be in any condition to be used - or it may have been sold off for scrap/recycling.

[snip]

The tragedy is that there really is a gap in the market that this class of device fills, as many Chumby users will attest.  While smartphones can do some of the things a chumby can do, in my opinion they don't do it as well.

Duane: I may be smokin' "funny stuff", but has anyone considered using a service like "Kickstarter"? I've invested in several of their projects and most of the ones I've chosen has reached or far exceeded their funding goals.

Re: Are we close?

Got the new clock on my chumby today.  Are the widgets working yet?