Topic: Chumby without wireless?

Can you use chumby without a wireless connection? If so, how?

Thank you.

Re: Chumby without wireless?

The current chumby firmware only includes the network driver for the zd1211 USB wifi adapter we've included with the device.  The Control Panel is designed for wifi configuration only.

In the production model, we are looking into adding additional drivers to support some other common USB network adapters.

Is there a particular type of network connection you'd like to see?

If you just want to run software (including Flash movies) on your device that don't require a network, there are instructions on the wiki for putting software on a USB storage device that the chumby will run instead of the included software.

Re: Chumby without wireless?

Hi Duane

My question stems from difficulties I have been having maintaining a stable wireless network (my modem and router are not playing nice). Also, I am finding that occasionally I'd like to demonstrate chumby to friends and family. I seem to be the only one with a wireless network, so it would be really convenient to be able to just plug it into an ADSL modem or something...yes, I know, I am hardware illiterate.

I'm curious to know about statistics on wireless network uptake in the U.S. as compared to Australia and other countries.

Re: Chumby without wireless?

I'll talk to the OS guys about adding the drivers for wired NICs - then we'd have to modify the Control Panel a bit.

Wireless use in the US is pretty high and growing.  Some cities have municipal Wifi, which means that it's available everywhere.  In my previous aparttment, I could see about a half dozen beacons, and I can still see three at my single-family suburban home.

Severl resaurant and coffe house chains offer free wifi, and I've even see it showing up in midrange hotels and motels that are frequented by business travellers.

That's not the only reason we're using wifi - we also think that people won't want to route network cabling all over their houses in order to use chumby.  I'm pretty techy, but even I only have the network cable running to two rooms - my home office and the family room, which has an original Apple Airport base station.

What we go on the road to demo chumbys we use a Kyocera EVDO/Wifi router.  We also have a way to capture widgets and content to a USB storage dongle, which can then subsequently be used to replay the widgets without a network connection. Of course, any content is stale, and some of the widgets won't work in this mode.  However, it's a useful way to occasionally demo the unit without a network in a pinch.

Re: Chumby without wireless?

Thanks for the considered response. I'd love to live in a perfect wifi world - I'd move to Singapore but it's a bit hot! smile

People are using wireless in Australia - I will track down some stats if I can 'cos I'm really not sure of the uptake rates. I live in relatively high-density housing in a city fringe suburb of Brisbane but I can usually only detect one other network. Most coffee shop wireless is paid for by credit card...I think. I think you can pay for credit that you can use in multiple hotspots. Correct me if I'm wrong, I don't use it!!!

I loved chumby when he was wireless in my home... extremely easy to set up and I hate blue cables too. Hopefully my own difficulties will be sorted soon!

But...I'm thinking who can I share Chumby widgets with when I have to convince my friends to buy a router AND a chumby...then I will probably have to set up their networks and make them relatively secure...there seems to be a bit of sensationalist media about the insecurity of wireless networks in the local media lately...so I'm not sure how keen they are going to be...so if you can make it work via wires it might not be a bad idea. I think it would make it considerably more accessible, both financially and technologically. So why not add the functionality if you have the time/cash/expertise to do so?

Not meaning to be negative here...just realistic...I really want chumby to achieve world domination in '07!!

Re: Chumby without wireless?

Get a travel router like this one:
http://www.dlink.com/products/?sec=0&pid=346

It comes in a case that is easy to carry around. Plug the included Ethernet cable into a port, plug the AC adapter in, and you should be ready to do a demo. It can power itself off from a USB port too. The case is pretty small, about the size of a paperback book.

Re: Chumby without wireless?

Duane wrote:

Severl resaurant and coffe house chains offer free wifi, and I've even see it showing up in midrange hotels and motels that are frequented by business travellers.

Yeah, but what I'm realizing is that most also have mac address filtering (I believe, if not, something like this) where you can get a connection and then need to log in via a web page interface in order to accept agreements and such.

I can say that during a recent 4 day trip I could find no where to demonstrate the chumby.... hence my other post asking for help running off of a flash drive.

Thanks,
Phillip

Re: Chumby without wireless?

Yes, we've noticed that too - we're looking into ways of working around that that hopefully don't require adding a complete web browser, keyboard, etc.

Re: Chumby without wireless?

Incidentally, a hack that will often work with free Wifi that does MAC address filtering is to take the USB dongle out of the chumby and plug it into a laptop, register it with the Wifi host through the laptop's browser, then plug it back into the chumby and boot it.

Re: Chumby without wireless?

Hi...I was just wondering if there was an update on this thread. Are we able to use the beta or production chumbys wired?  Ta!

Re: Chumby without wireless?

The production chumbys include kernel drivers for the most common wired USB NICs, and it's pretty easy to configure form the command line or from a dongle using the "debugchumby" callbacks.  However, at the moment, there's no Control Panel support.  There is an open suggestion in the bug database to add that support.

Re: Chumby without wireless?

Good idea...because the first sentence is gobbledygook to me smile