Topic: What Else Chumbies Might Be.
This might be more appropriate in Hardware, please feel free to move Mod’s.
I think that the chumby itself will be a neat device; sometimes ambient, and sometimes useful. But the real highlights will come from how easy it will be to hack, and what other uses it will have.
The CVS camera and videocam have spawned hundreds of sub-hacks and useful devices from IR goggles to being mounted on a weather balloon. Another reason the Alpha giveaway well in advance of release is such a good idea. By the time the Chumby is released, there will be a wealth of information and source available for new Makers imagination. I hope that in time there is a community available like that of the Arduino and Gumstix wiki’s.
As the hackable market stands there is a real lack of small embedable devices with LCD’s. Driving LCD’s and hacking existing LCD’s to take RGB output is called the HOLY GRAIL on forums (Fora) and wiki’s.
Sparkfun finally has a neat 128x128 Nokia knockoff lcd that is inexpensive and usable, but is just now starting to make it’s way into projects. The gumstix device is awesome, but doesn’t do graphics in any sort of vga or standard format. The Chumby could fill this gap. At $150 getting a 3.5†lcd screen with an embedded 266 proc with the (hopefully) upcoming; ability to interface with Phidgets and Arduino for some custom I/O ability, peer-to-peer networking ala OLPC for some Chumby to Chumby action, and a battery + charging system (this really needs to be done soon), who wouldn’t grab a Chumby or two for their next hack project.
The beauty of the Chumby will be it’s ubiquity. Because it’s cheap and it’s open it WILL BE USED. Not just by people who want to use it as the Chumby, but for many other purposes. I think that the Chumby might end up being ‘the’ or contributing to ‘a’ standard in QVGA devices.
Know what else is QVGA? Just about every Head Mounted Display in existence. Wearable Chumby anyone? This is what I would like to see.