Contrary to the rumors, you're only human. Thanks for keeping our little Chumbys humming along for another year, and keeping the Chumby community going. Merry Christmas to you and your family!

We will all still have a very Chumby Christmas!

Things are coming along nicely, but unfortunately I won't make the beginning of the year.

I've got the basic site up and running at home - I'm finishing up and testing user account management, since I think that many people may have forgotten their passwords and will need to reset them.  Since some units have changed hands over the last year, obviously I'll need to have device activation and deactivation working properly.

I also have basic device management going.  Once these two sections are tested, then I can probably go live, at least in beta.  One thing that will be critical is seeing how the system scales with load, since it turns out we have about three times as many devices hitting the systems than I had anticipated.  It turns out that a surprising number of people still use their chumby devices.

One thing that's slowing development down a bit is that the original Chumby system was in Rails 2.x, while the new system is in Rails 4, and many, many things have changed - for the better, but some coding is required.  It's a worthwhile investment for the long run, though.

I've also ripped out a lot of the stuff that was creating load - branding, localization, and analytics.  The system was built to handle the possibility of many future types of devices, but at this point, that's not going to happen, so I can optimize to what we actually have.

Just unpacked my Chumby since I haven't had wireless internet in ages - didn't think the service was still up. Feels great to see the Chumby One up and running. Looking throught the forums it seems that's due to Duane.

Thank you so much for keeping this service up and as it seems preparing for some kind of update. Looking forward to it and waiting patiently with my Chumby back on ;-)

Happy New Year to you, Duane, and to the other Chumby enthusiasts.  Do understand your time constraints, Duane, and am trying hard to be patient.  Your efforts are very much appreciated!   (Chumby Classic, Chumby 1, and Chumby 8)

Should have added, it was my grandson's favorite thing to play with.

It probably best to ask these sorts of questions in the "Service, Warranty and Repair" section of the forum.

When you configure the network, what does it say for the MAC?

What type of Chumby is it?

It could just be a loose network dongle, which mean you might just have to open the unit and reseat it.  It's also possible that the network dongle itself failed but I've only seen two units that have done that

@Steevo and others who are worry about having the LCARS clock image permanently burnt into your retinas- Don't know if you missed it, but nathanm actually made a couple versions of very basic, simple alternative USB widgets. I'm avoiding saying "firmware" because this was partly a response to the zurkware frenzy. Quite the opposite to what that turned into, nathanm's USB setup was purposely simple, almost "elegantly simple." I've been using it on and off, I think his second edition. It just has a few clocks and some other widgets, most of which I deleted without no problem. Unlike zurkware, if you just look at nathanm's work, you can figure out how to modify it without previous study. He's even included the AccuWeather version that's extremely easy to localize, unlike the hidden mysteries of zurkware-weather. Best of all, you can use it on the USB and then pull it out without having to reset anything on the Chumby- it doesn't screw around with anything in there, and the LCARS clock just comes back and reconnects to your Internet source. It's a good thing to keep as a backup even if wizard Duane does get the old system running again. It's here-
http://forum.chumby.com/viewtopic.php?id=8867

@Duane, what a guy, still willing to refer folks to the "Service, Warranty..." area. At least it seems folks finally stopped complaining that the $60 they paid for their Infocast entitled them to free content forever. Duane, want me to become the "Service, Warranty and Repair" Department? Of course, I have no technical skills at all, but I've pretty much got all those canned "tech support" answers for all electronic products memorized... eg... "Unplug it, and leave it unplugged for three minutes..." "Check if the cables are loose..." "unplug your modem for three minutes..." "any chance there's squirrels living inside it?" "Sorry, your warranty has expired. Would you like the address of an authorized repair center you can bring it to for a slight charge..." "Sorry, you never should have listened to what that Geek Squad guy told you to do, now you have voided your warranty..." "it's supposed to do that...." "that is a known bug and our technicians are working very hard on it.. " etc., etc.

@nathanm- hope that new avatar is just a "temporary solution." I was trying to think of a bad joke to make about it, but I'm speechless.

Honestly, it's really nice to see all you Chumby forum folks are still around, and some folks are still hacking away at it. Even in it's current state, my old Chumby is still a better product in many ways than the fancy, slick new Sony clock radio I just bought.

Some more progress - I have the 3.5" devices completely supported, and I have the 8" devices to the point where they successfully authenticate, load channels, and play widgets.

There's still some ways to go - I still have to support all the other things the 8" devices do, like add, delete and edit channels.

On the web site itself, I have the user management almost completed, but still have some way to go on device and channel management.

All in all though, the really, really hard parts are done, it's now a matter of churning through the rest.

It's really quite nice to see widgets playing again.

A surprising number of them still work fine, and those that don't are mostly missing a few content services that are fairly easy to tilt back up, such as weather.

Looks like 2014 is going to be a good year!

Not yet - in the mean time, if anyone is still using the beta server (ie. with a modified "hosts" file), they should move to the production server.  I will be taking down the beta server at some point for update or replacement.

Nice moves DUANE!