Topic: Offline Support

I'm interested to know if the method used to support the Dash with the Chumby service could also allow one to boot a Dash with at least minimal functionality (alarm clock) without needing access to an external server.  Is that doable?  I will likely subscribe to the chumby service when Dash support becomes official, but it would be very nice to know that I could run my clock indefinitely should this service cease (yes, I'll bite my tongue on that topic wink ).

Re: Offline Support

beefy1986 wrote:

should this service cease (yes, I'll bite my tongue on that topic wink ).

Just fyi... Duane is amazingly dedicated in his desire to keep the Chumby infrastructure alive.   back when Chumby the company went out of business, he looked at the database that recorded how many individual devices were still hitting the servers, and said to himself "I just can't let this go away, I can't do it to the people" (or something like that).

And as a result, he, personally, took it upon himself, at his own expense, to first keep a stub service running, for over a year, so that while the chumbys didn't have their widgets, they would at least log in, and download a controlpanel, and act as a clock/radio/music player.   

All the while, he was rewriting the service so that it could be more economical on the back end, (it used to cost thousands per month) and yet provide almost everything that people had come to love about their chumbys.

We relaunched the service July 1, 2014, and it's been running great ever since.

Is it possible that, someday, maybe, circumstances will change? of course.... but I don't see it happening while Duane's in charge, it's just not in his nature to abandon people like that.

Cleaning up any loose bits and bytes.

Re: Offline Support

There will be sufficient information on how this was done for you to make an "offline" version, as long as you have the ability to author simple Flash AS2/AVM1 movies.

Once this version is out, I can see what I can do to *also* make it a functional offline clock, though you would have to manually set the time on each boot.

Re: Offline Support

Thanks Duane.  I greatly appreciate all of your efforts, and I hope my original message didn't come across as ungrateful in any way.
I've done a good amount of development in the past, so I'd love to contribute to the effort.

Re: Offline Support

beefy1986 wrote:

Thanks Duane.  I greatly appreciate all of your efforts, and I hope my original message didn't come across as ungrateful in any way.

It's OK, I didn't take it that way.  At some point in the future, there will probably be too few working chumby devices active to justify the costs of running the back end systems - hopefully that's many years away - and there will undoubtedly be some holdouts that want to keep using them.  If it's a reasonably-scoped effort, I have no issue with making that possible.

All of the chumby devices, except the dash, were designed to be sufficiently hackable to do whatever you might want, if you have the skills to do it.  The dash turns out to be somewhat hackable, unintentionally, as well.

Someone did provide an "offline" patch for some of the chumby devices back in the 2013/2014 era, when the devices were hibernated, before I restored the service.  I don't know why he stopped doing it, although it does require some persistence to support products for the long term.