Topic: Control Panel Loosing Connectivity

Hi there,

I have a sort of silly question. Why is the flash Control Panel on my Chumby One always thinking that is loosing network connection?

I haven't activated my Chumby cuz don't think its necessary, I can use offline widgets and still stream music from Shoutcast and my personal radio stations.

But the flash Control Panel version 2.8.57 thinks it is "Not Connected" however the signal bar shows 2 bars and is somehow erratic! But the audio is still streaming in the background and I cannot change the station unless I restart the control panel! This is very bad!

It annoys the bits out of me!

Other info about my Chumby:
Software version
1.0.7
Firmware build number
1.0.3454
Hardware version number
10.6

Re: Control Panel Loosing Connectivity

chumbies have weird network detection. they dont care about signal strength. they need to be able to load files from chumby.com's servers. are you using my offline firmware ? if so you should not be having these issues. it has the network detection patched properly. try v9.0 if you are running an old version.
if you are using the other offline fws they do not.

Re: Control Panel Loosing Connectivity

The problem is only with the Chumby Flash Control Panel thingy, the underlying Linux box is rock solid.

I was streaming AAC or MP3 radios for days on end, without any dropouts, not even my PC can do that! But I used ssh and btplay directly.

I will try your offline firmware, and let you know how it goes.

Thanks zurk for your hard effort and quick response!

Re: Control Panel Loosing Connectivity

I started using my Chumby a few days ago and had this same thing crop up. I was treating it as a linux box but Chumby.com and its various widgets were treating it like a client on their services. So for the Chumby.com based apps/widgets it was "not connected" if it was unable to handshake with the mothership back at Chumby.com.  For me as long as I could ping to an outside ip it was all golden. As Chumby.com passes into that good night of closing businesses our devices will shift away from needing to contact the Chumby.com mothership and rely instead on the great wide world of the intertubes. Zurks efforts are a great step in that direction.

Hold on for a transition folks.

5 (edited by Odo 2012-04-21 12:57:20)

Re: Control Panel Loosing Connectivity

Wow, I can't believe Chumby Industries is going down! Its a real shame! I love these Chumbies!

Nevertheless, I was working the past week on an alternative to the Flash "firmware" and I am happy to announce a preview of what I would like to call ChumbOS (if does not infringe into any copyright issues, but it does not matter what you call it). I wanted to have an alternative to the buggy and tethered flash interface, but I did not want to abandon flash altogether since there are very nice widgets out there.
So, I made a Launcher application, that can start various flash widgets and also my natively built apps that could use all the peripherals from C code.

Here is a screen-shoot of my Launcher's GUI.
Which is fully configurable using an INI file and can launch processes and interface with the framebuffer, touchscreen, bender, ChumbyButton and backlight. I have not yet figured out how to change the volume programatically but maybe some of can help me with that.

ChumbyOS preview of the Alpha version
It IS very crude at the moment, but I just got it working last night.

I have many ideas for uses of the Chumby, hence I am terribly sorry to see it fade away.
Maybe I shall get myself a couple of them Chumbies for spares since my touchscreen seems to misbehave.

PS: I know this is off topic, and I will make a new thread with the details of ChumbOS. smile

Re: Control Panel Loosing Connectivity

zurk wrote:

chumbies have weird network detection. they dont care about signal strength. they need to be able to load files from chumby.com's servers. are you using my offline firmware ? if so you should not be having these issues. it has the network detection patched properly. try v9.0 if you are running an old version.
if you are using the other offline fws they do not.

I downloaded v9.0 of your "firmware", but since I modified the startup scripts on my Chumby they don't launch the debugchumby from the usb drive when booting up.
But I did launch your version of the controlpanel.swf from the root of the USB drive, and I saw the output was much cleaner than the regular CP, nevertheless, the "firmware" still thought that it lost connectivity after starting a Shoutcast stream...

I would like to make this control panel working since it is an OK-ish interface for playing music. But, as per my previous post I would be using my launcher application to start/stop the control panel whenever I wish.

Now I will need to go to the pub! And have a beer in the living memory of Chumby Industries.

Thanks to all that made Chumby what it is today. I am sure it will live forever!!!

Re: Control Panel Loosing Connectivity

you probably messed up something in your network detection scripts then.
create a squid proxy, redirect all traffic from the chumby through that with full logging turned on and see the point where is contacts chumby.com. then fix the scripts which execute the connection command or use a hosts redirect to redirect it to the local chumby webserver.

Re: Control Panel Loosing Connectivity

Dear zurk,

I didn't mess up my network detection scripts.
I modified the startup scripts some months ago when I got my Chumby, and I forgot what exactly I did.

Now I checked it out, I modified my /etc/init.d/rcS.background script to stop launching the control panel... It checks for existence of a file, and if it finds it, then it will stop execution of the rcS.background script right after the /mnt/usb/debugchumby script is executed!!!

It seems that your "firmware" is not working out of the box!

This is also confirmed by the actual contents of your "debugchumby" from the 9.0 version of the archive.
I quote:

iwconfig rausb0 mode Ad-Hoc essid chumbynet key AAAA-1111-22
ifconfig rausb0 192.168.2.2 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 192.168.2.255
/mnt/usb/TalkingChumby/flite_cmu_us_kal16 -t "Welcome to Zurk's Offline Firmware"

After inspecting this a long time... wink I wonder: How is this supposed to work when copied on a USB stick?!? neutral

This is not even a valid shell script!!!

Am I missing something here?

Because it looks that your firmware cannot possibly work when copied on a USB stick!!!


On the other hand I have no clue on how to do the proxy thingy! But it sounds interesting, where can I get a crash course on doing that?

Re: Control Panel Loosing Connectivity

im pretty sure it works cuz 600 ppl are using it including myself.
reflash your chumby with a clean firmware and try my usb stick. dont worry about whether it can work or not. it just will.

10 (edited by Odo 2012-04-22 23:37:01)

Re: Control Panel Loosing Connectivity

Well I don't understand why it didn't work, cuz I did put it on a flash drive... and as I said it didn't...

I would like to know why it does not work for me.

And I want to know how is it supposed to work!


Are you mounting OVER, the /psp ? I don't know what the -bind option does in mount...


My chumby is able to run the hooks from the USB stick the reason I know this is because I just tested my own launcher application, ChumbOS smile

Check it out:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/chumboslauncher/