Topic: I think Chumby may be almost gone

I put a support ticket through the chumby.com system today, and I got back a bounce message from liveperson.com.

Apparently ross@chumby.com is no longer a valid email address but liveperson is still sending messages there. 

So no one is getting the emails sent to support anymore.  Ross must be gone and I haven't heard from Duane in a few days.

It might be the VCs cut them off.  No more money. 

The system is still working but I bought a used unit I need unregisted so I can reregister it.  At this time no one is working at chumby to do that.

Is anyone in the San Diego area who can do a driveby and check to see if anyone is still there?

Chumby Industries
12264 El Camino Real
San Diego, CA 92130
(858) 454-2420
http://g.co/maps/ez82n

I just called that number and it's still connected. I used the dial by name directory to call Duane but his mailbox is full. 


From: postmaster@liveperson.com
To: steve
Subject: Delivery failure (Ticket LTK4950126410216X)
Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2012 10:48:37 -0500


Unable to deliver message.
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From: steve
To: ross@chumby.com <ross@chumby.com>
Subject: Ticket LTK4950126410216X
Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2012 10:48:27 -0500
Message-ID: <201202141048270446.4950.24234@equinix.liveperson.net>
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Re: I think Chumby may be almost gone

AS A QUEST FOR HONOR, ZOLTAR WILL GO TO CHUMBY OFFICE TO SOLVE YOUR RIDDLE SIR.

I NEED TO PICK UP MOUNTAIN DEW AND BEGIN MY JOURNEY INTO THE NIGHT. PREPARE YOURSELF FOR UNVEILED SECRETS!!!!!!!

Re: I think Chumby may be almost gone

NEVERMIND, I SAW IN ANOTHER FORUM THREAD THAT DWAIN IS HEALTHY BUT SICK. NOW I HAVE EXTRA MOUNTAIN DEW

Re: I think Chumby may be almost gone

Zoltar- Seems you may be our best chance of seeing the future around here. See anything? I just asked you with your crystal ball, and you told me:

"Live in the now. Airwolf is never coming back to TV."

I guess you have spoken.

Re: I think Chumby may be almost gone

Before the lights go out at Chumby, it would be cool if they could post instructions on how to run your own "local" Chumby server, and offer a panel download of a version where you customize the server name or IP address.  The idea being, you could run your own Chumby cloud on a PC, rig your devices to connect to it, and still get some use out of the devices once they go away.  I know the real servers do a lot of authentication and so on, which would be unnecessary if you are running your own Chumby server, or at least far simpler.  I mean, the Chumby provides the credentials, the local version of the server could just pass an OK message out without checking them.  I don't know how compact or open source their server software might be, but maybe it's easy to bundle up and allow you to run it from another web server of some sort under Windoze or something?  You'd have to have instructions that make the Chumby device go to your server instead of the real one and I assume that's easy to do.  Lot of assumptions, I know.

Re: I think Chumby may be almost gone

Does anyone know if they are interested in selling the company?

Re: I think Chumby may be almost gone

frisinidesigns wrote:

Does anyone know if they are interested in selling the company?

Yes, of course. Please wire money to me via Western Union.
I also have a very nice bridge here in Sydney that I may part with for the right price.

Re: I think Chumby may be almost gone

It just seems like no one is beating down the doors to license the Chumby platform.  Sad, in some ways it's quite innovative and excellent.  A little quirky too.

Sony is gone, and it's not clear if they are still using the Chumby platform on their new devices. 
http://dash.dash.sel.sony.com/
It doesn't look like a Chumby to me.
What is that thing?  Does anyone know? 

Insignia doesn't seem to know what Chumby is.  I called for support and to buy a power supply and they claimed to have none and not know where to get any.  Clearly that's ridiculous.  Someone quoted Insignia as saying "We haven't worked with Chumby for a couple years".

So is there any future for the Chumby platform? Is anyone still working at the office in San Diego?  Is anyone making hardware anymore?  Is there a future at all?  Or is this a dead product?

9 (edited by bobsz 2012-03-18 00:07:40)

Re: I think Chumby may be almost gone

Yeah, Chumby has no income from devices now, so it seems like they've cut their service to the bone. However, they've kept the website and widget servers going so far. Duane does still help people through these forums. There's also a volunteer moderator helping. And some of the long-time Chums have helped with problems posted here. The forums seem to be the only "customer service" method left. Hopefully, the servers will keep going. But if not, several people have made offline firmware if all else fails. (Search "zurk.")Over the months Chumby seems to be letting us down gently. Another company (FrameChannel) who provided free content for a few other brands of Internet Devices just shut down and walked away without notice last year. The devices became totally useless overnight.

The Sony devices were on the Chumby platform, but they completely split from Chumby content and support about a month ago. Sony's cut back services a lot. They have a long history of just dropping good platforms and devices since the days of Betamax. Supposedly, they're going to release Android devices to replace the Dash. Just another step in Google taking over the world.

The Insignia brands haven't been made in a long time. There was a Chumby clone "WowBox" that came out in the winter, but I don't think that went anywhere. You can still supposedly buy them from Singapore (http://www.wowtech.com.sg/) but I never heard of anybody who did.

My guess is that the platform is such a good one, that it'll be around a long time. I think there might just not be any hand-holding for people who are not tech-savvy. The Chumbys were made to be hacked, and most of those people don't need the company. The platform is open-source, so I'm sure a lot of people will be developing it no mater what. Just last month a company called Greenwatch started using a Chumby widget for their power-control services. So, you never know.

Re: I think Chumby may be almost gone

Not sure about Sony, they have a fancy looking site with some fancy looking devices that look vaguely like Chumby there.

They took over running the servers themselves for their customers.  Why would they do that if they were dropping the platform? 

Unless they have a developer who is going to continue on with the platform in house at Sony, that is. It would be interesting to know.

Re: I think Chumby may be almost gone

frisinidesigns wrote:

Does anyone know if they are interested in selling the company?

I think at the right price virtually everything is for sale. 
Did you ask them?

Re: I think Chumby may be almost gone

cdrmrsr wrote:

Before the lights go out at Chumby, it would be cool if they could post instructions on how to run your own "local" Chumby server, and offer a panel download of a version where you customize the server name or IP address.  The idea being, you could run your own Chumby cloud on a PC, rig your devices to connect to it, and still get some use out of the devices once they go away.  I know the real servers do a lot of authentication and so on, which would be unnecessary if you are running your own Chumby server, or at least far simpler.  I mean, the Chumby provides the credentials, the local version of the server could just pass an OK message out without checking them.  I don't know how compact or open source their server software might be, but maybe it's easy to bundle up and allow you to run it from another web server of some sort under Windoze or something?  You'd have to have instructions that make the Chumby device go to your server instead of the real one and I assume that's easy to do.  Lot of assumptions, I know.


this times one million.  however i doubt it. 

we are probably gonna be stuck with paperweights, liked i feared would happen when i first invested in these.  so much for an 'open' product/project.

Re: I think Chumby may be almost gone

IF this is it and the ship is indeed going down I just want to give a salute to Duane. He's been here for us for a long time and I for one appreciate it. Keep the music playing to till it all goes under!

Re: I think Chumby may be almost gone

The fat lady sings! http://www.theverge.com/2012/4/20/29630 … ology-sold

Re: I think Chumby may be almost gone

Yep, it's all over, I saw this story yesterday also.  My Chumby serves a useful purpose for me and I would like to have it continue to do so rather than get bricked.  A Chumby that only plays the internal clock widget and USB mp3 files is more limited than I would like.  Some widget capability and the ability to stream music would be the best.  It can't be that hard to bring this to an elegant conclusion.

My speculation is that no-one will be interested buying in anything other than the patent portfolio.  Given the open nature of the platform, I'm optimistic that there will be instructions over the summer on how to get some functionality out of the installed base once the servers shut down.

Re: I think Chumby may be almost gone

Does chumby even have an  IPO? I would buy chumby out if I knew how....

Re: I think Chumby may be almost gone

Could somebody please explain what this all means. I just purchased  Chumby 8 a couple of weeks ago and gave it as a present to my grandma so that she could follow her children and grandchildren on Facebook without having to learn to use a computer.
Does this all mean that soon the Chumby won't connect to the internet anymore and the whole product will be a useless alarm clock? I spent months trying to find the perfect digital frame and carefully studied each product. Nothing could suit this purpose better. I feel like I've been cheated now. Why didn't it say clearly on the front page that this may stop working soon. In my country this product even costs almost twice what it costs in USA. sad

Re: I think Chumby may be almost gone

it all depends on you. your chumby will work great until the summer. after the summer its anyones guess. likely scenario if it goes dark is the chumby will basically show an authentication page and this forum will not work.
if you want it to keep working, download my offline firmware on a usb stick and customize it by reading the forum posts. if you can help yourself, your chumby will keep working. if you cant, thats life.

Re: I think Chumby may be almost gone

Zurk, I'll do my best to keep my Chumby alive. I'm not giving up on it even though I just got into this. Please, keep the instructions simple so that non-developers like me understand what to do when the lights go off. I appreciate your work in this community.

Re: I think Chumby may be almost gone

@maiea- some people are trying to get together a thread with "simple" instructions. You might want to check back here:
http://forum.chumby.com/viewtopic.php?pid=42204#p42204