Topic: Managing multiple Chumbi

I just activated my second Chumby. Just had to have one for work as well ;-) Is there anyway to have these be independent devices? It seems that my channels/widgets are copied on both units.

Obviously I could set up two separate accounts, but it seems like there should be a better way. If this is the only way, if I delete one Chumby off of my account will I be able to reactivate it on a different account now that it is already activated?

-HuckFinn

Re: Managing multiple Chumbi

Do they have the same name? I believe it is name dependant. Correct me if I am wrong

Re: Managing multiple Chumbi

They are named differently. As soon as I activated the second unit, all of my current channels were copied over to this new unit. So I then set the "My Playing" channel to the new one and made some changes. These changes were then carried through to both units. Maybe I am doing something obviously wrong.

-HuckFinn

Re: Managing multiple Chumbi

You should be able to assign different channels to each device.

Re: Managing multiple Chumbi

When I go to "My Channels" I do not see anything there which would indicate what Chumby I am setting. So the "default" channel is the same for both of them. Should I be able to set the channels on each Chumby individually? So each Chumby could have a "News" channel with different widgets in each one? If this is the case I must be missing something on the website.

Or are you saying that I need to setup multiple channels and then only select the ones I want to use on each Chumby. For example I have a Photo channel on my "Home" Chumby. Make a "Photo-Work" channel then set that up. The problem (or benefit) there is that now all of the channels are available on both Chumbies. To me this is a problem as my work chumby will get messed with by other people. I for one do not want to get into trouble by having mature content, like "CollegeHumor" show up on my desk. Secondly people may inadvertantly delete widgets off of a channel which is for my home Chumby.

I may resort to setting up a separate account for my work Chumby to make it easier.

-HuckFinn

Re: Managing multiple Chumbi

Channels are independent of chumbys - you can have as many channels as you like, which may or not be shown on any chumbys.

You select the channels for each chumby on the "my chumby/now playing" page - there should be a popup that allows you to select the chumby, and another popup for the channel to show on that chumby.

Re: Managing multiple Chumbi

Duane,

Maybe I am simply not following you. So here is my arrangement. I have two Chumbies, as soon as I activated the second one, named "Work", all of the channels/widgets I had setup on my "Home" Chumby were copied over to my "Work" Chumby. If I go to My Chumby/Now Playing page and select my "Home" chumby and then edit channels - any change there gets copied to BOTH Chumbies. I can not see how to have independant channel/widget lists for each Chumby under the same account name. Again I could be doing something wrong, so please help. Is there a way to select which channels show up on which Chumby?

I am sure you have multiple Chumbies. Do you have multiple Chumbies assigned to the same user account? If so do you have different channels/widgets on each of these? I am just not seeing how to accomplish this.

I may just set up a new account for my work unit. My only concern is how to reactivate this chumby onto that account.

-HuckFinn

Re: Managing multiple Chumbi

The widgets weren't copied - both chumbys were tuned to the same channel.

Again, think TV, where a widget channel is like a TV channel, and a chumby is like a TV set.  When you buy a TV, HBO doesn't create a special channel just for that TV, the programs aren't "copied".

If they're both tuned to the same channel, they'll show the same widgets, and when you change anything on that channel, both chumbys will reflect the change.

In order to show different widgets on different chumbys, they need to be tuned to different channels.  You do that from the "My chumby" page, or from the chumby itself from the Channels button.

So, yes, I have multiple chumbies all registered to the same account, some showing the same channel, others showing different channels, and a bunch of other channels not showing on *any* chumbys.

9 (edited by ozpaulb 2008-01-16 13:34:07)

Re: Managing multiple Chumbi

Duane wrote:

The widgets weren't copied - both chumbys were tuned to the same channel.

Again, think TV, where a widget channel is like a TV channel, and a chumby is like a TV set.  When you buy a TV, HBO doesn't create a special channel just for that TV, the programs aren't "copied".

If I understand how Chumby's work (based on what the original poster on this thread described), I'm not sure the TV/HBO analogy works.

If I follow your analogy, then there is a fixed set of "channels" on chumby.com that all chumby's (owned by all customers) can tune to (and cannot change their content).  That isn't the case with chumby.com - I am creating the channels for my chumby (and "customer x" creates a different channel for his/her chumby).

But, it sounds like if I create a channel for my chumby, then I buy another chumby, those chumby's have the same choices of channels (and can't be different - like the choice "customer x" has).

If that second chumby is for my children, then I may not want them to be able to watch "HBO".  If anything, it should be possible to 'block' channels from a certain chumby on your account.

It seems that if you want multiple chumby's with completely different channel setups/choices, you must create multiple logins to chumby.com (as the OP suggested).  Is that correct?

- Paulb

Re: Managing multiple Chumbi

To provide different channels to different chumbys, you don't have to create a new account.

To provide a different channel *selection* to a different chumby, yes, you'd have to a create different account.  We do not currently have the ability to block individual channels from individual chumbys shared by the same account.

11 (edited by huckfinn 2008-01-16 15:03:36)

Re: Managing multiple Chumbi

Ok now I understand. So I set up the channels I want ANY of my Chumbies to see on the website and then simply pick the channel I want to view on each Chumby, but all channels are available to all Chumbies. So in your analogy, I am setting up my own TV station with multiple channels that any of my Chumbies can view.

This is not what I want. I want my work unit to have a very limited channel selection, so it seems my only option is to setup a new account. I know that my co-workers are going to pick this thing up and change channels, delete widgets, etc. I do not want this to affect my Chumby at home or have to worry what channel my co-worker leaves it on. If there was a way to lock the Chumby to a certain channel that would also solve this problem.

Since I have already registered my second unit, how can I de-activate a chumby or reset it back to factory defaults? For now I will setup a different account for my work Chumby.

Thanks for all the help.

-HuckFinn

Re: Managing multiple Chumbi

On the "my chumby" page, you should see a link for "Delete chumby" - that will deregister that device from that account.

At that point you should be able to reboot the device and it will ask for registration again.