Topic: Flame war on saving Chumby

kinda pointless since the "save chumby" solution simply tethers the chumby to an even more fragile online service, one not even backed up by a real company with revenue.
a good solution would be to convert all online chumbies to offline chumbies with a simple control panel update which offlines the chumbies.

Re: Flame war on saving Chumby

msharp42 wrote:

kinda pointless since the "save chumby" solution simply tethers the chumby to an even more fragile online service, one not even backed up by a real company with revenue.
a good solution would be to convert all online chumbies to offline chumbies with a simple control panel update which offlines the chumbies.

a) You can't do that with just a downloading a Control Panel - it requires creating a new firmware image, modifying the current one, or booting with a bunch of code on a dongle.

b) Absolutely nothing's stopping you from doing that.  Be my guest - everything you need to do this is publicly available.  All you have to do is stop talking about what other people should do, and start doing, as I have done.

Re: Flame war on saving Chumby

While zurk's software certainly provides a lot of functionality, it also leaves some significant holes at present. As much as I might wish it could allow me to do everything that the present server solution does, I have already figured out that wishing doesn't make things happen. I, for one, applaud Duane's effort to solve a real problem in a way that makes it very likely that my Chumbys are will still wake me up on time on March 1, provide me with the latest weather and let me listen to some of my favorite radio stations that just happen to be located well outside my area.

Re: Flame war on saving Chumby

Out of curiosity, since your idea of a be-all end-all solution is to just install an offline firmware and let the Chumby service die... what are you doing here?  Most of the people still here are here because they want to continue developing and improving their Chumbies, and want to share their improvements with the rest of the community so everyone can benefit; you don't seem to share this mindset.  I'm not saying your opinion is wrong, just that it's not an ideal solution for everyone.

Also, "root access to the servers" is a ridiculous requirement -- I don't know of a single service anywhere that gives everyone "root access to the servers".  Even if all the server software were fully open-sourced, it wouldn't do most people any good because they'd have to A) have a server to host the software on (which most people don't), and B) be able to point their Chumby to the new server instead of the main server (not a trivial task for your average user).

Re: Flame war on saving Chumby

Exactly *why* can't you create your own Control Panel?

All the "secrets" you need to manage the device from Flash is in this source file. Everything else in the CP is stock Flash, which any competent developer could do, even with Open Source tools on the device itself, which I also provide here.

Simply edit the hosts file in /psp to pull the Control Panel locally, or replace the "start_control_panel" script and you don't need any Chumby servers whatsoever.  All of the "auth" code to talk to the current service is in the Control Panel itself, so you could make it do anything you wanted, including talking to other servers or to nobody at all.

You don't need access to *anything* I have or know about about the current service to do what you're demanding.

That's what's so odd about's zurk's firmware - he spent all that time and effort to make the existing Control Panel happy with various hacks and scripts, when all he had to do is make a new one that did exactly what he wanted it to do.

Re: Flame war on saving Chumby

Even if I were to release source to the Control Panel, it would *not* include the source for the commercial music sources.  I simply cannot legally do it.  There's no point in bitching to me about it because I'm not responsible for the conditions imposed by other companies for the use of their products.

Of course, there's *nothing* stopping anyone else from entering into equivalent agreements with these companies.

Re: Flame war on saving Chumby

Oh, the irony. It burns.

However the idea that I can, without any QA infrastructure, flawlessly deploy four (CC, C1/I3, C8 and I8) firmware images within 28 days to 40,000 devices, when I have a full time job, with the build systems offline, is completely and utterly ridiculous, and would be the height of irresponsibility.

The whole point of the "stub" server exercise is to buy time to do something properly considered - which could, in fact, be a firmware update that makes the devices work offline.

Re: Flame war on saving Chumby

msharp42 wrote:

what does my "contribution" have to do with anything ?

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRl9RvoUg5DHmBnqzu27ervB3i6iIu1AlN9aDdUxhceBsRjQQm0

Re: Flame war on saving Chumby

Too much time has been spent on this useless back-and-forth.

How about something most of us will enjoy instead?

The New York Times Best Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe

Makes about 18  five in. cookies
*Note chill time of 48 HOURS.*
Ingredients:
•    2 cups minus 2 tbsp. (8.5 oz.) cake flour (or cake flour substitute)
•    1 2/3 cups (8.5 oz.) bread flour (I LOVE King Arthur Organic Bread Flour)
•    1 1/4 tsp. baking soda
•    1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
•    1 1/2 tsp. coarse salt (such as kosher salt)
•    2 1/2 sticks (1 1/4 cups) unsalted butter
•    1 1/4 cups packed (10 oz.) light brown sugar
•    1 cup plus 2 tbsp. (8 oz.) granulated sugar
•    2 eggs
•    2 tsp. vanilla extract
•    1 1/4 lbs. bittersweet/dark chocolate (I used a combination of Ghirardelli 60% and Hershey's dark chocolate chips)
•    Sea salt (or kosher salt) for sprinkling
Preparation:
•    Sift flours, baking soda, baking powder, and salt into a medium bowl.
•    In a large bowl (preferably of a stand mixer) cream butter and sugars together (using paddle attachment) until very light, about 5 minutes.
•    Beat in the eggs, one at a time, making sure they are fully incorporated before adding the next.
•    Mix in the vanilla.
•    On low speed, add the dry ingredients and mix until just combined, only 5-10 seconds.(I had to get in there and knead with my hands since I was mixer-less.)
•    Gently incorporate the chocolate into the dough.
•    Press plastic wrap against the dough and refrigerate 48 hours (at least 24, can be up to 72 hours). Dough can be used in batches, if desired.
•    When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line baking sheet(s) with parchment paper/silpat.
•    Scoop 3.5 oz dough balls (LARGE golf ball size) onto baking sheet, making sure to leave ample room between (should be able to fit 5-6 on each sheet, depending on the size). Sprinkle each dough ball lightly with sea or kosher salt.
•    Bake 15-20 minutes (varies depending on oven) until golden brown but still soft.
•    Transfer sheet to a wire rack and cool 10 minutes, then move cookies onto the rack or other surface to continue to cool.
•    Repeat, as needed, and in as many batches as desired, until all the dough is used.
•    Eat warm and make sure you have a napkin near (for crumbs, melted chocolate, and the drool that will inevitably accumulate due to the overwhelming deliciousness)!

Tar, feathers, congress. Some assembly required.

Re: Flame war on saving Chumby

Here's one from an NPR piece a few months back:

Aunt Ida's Poppy Seed Cookies

3 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 cup poppy seeds
1 cup peanut oil
1 cup sugar
3 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla

Set the oven rack in the middle position. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Cover a 14 X 16-inch baking sheet with foil, shiny side up. Coat the foil with vegetable spray or use a silicone liner.

Sift together flour and baking powder; add poppy seeds.

Separately, whisk peanut oil, sugar, eggs, and vanilla in a medium bowl. Add sifted dry ingredients and mix to combine. Chill the dough in the refrigerator one hour, or until firm enough to handle.

With floured hands or wearing disposable gloves, break off teaspoon-size pieces of dough and roll into small balls. Place dough balls on baking sheet about 2 inches apart, or 12 cookies per sheet. Pat into circles with your fingers (rather than rolling or stamping). Bake 10 to 12 minutes, or until lightly browned around edges. Let cookies cool 1 minute on baking sheet on rack and then transfer cookies to a rack. Cookies will become crisp as they cool.

Store between sheets of wax paper in a covered tin or freeze in a tightly sealed plastic bag or container.

Re: Flame war on saving Chumby

msharp42 wrote:

i think sevralan and zurks firmware have updated at least a dozen times.

FWIW I have not released any firmware - ever. I cobbled together a solution which untethers my chumby from the chumby servers & posted the details on how I did that.

Baking... now that's something I really do a lot of - while listening to podcasts & streaming radio on my chumby. wink

Cake recipe that is asked for more times than any other:
Lime syrup & coconut cake

Cake:
    * 125g butter
    * 3 eggs
    * 3/4 cup milk
    * 1 1/2 cups self-raising flour
    * 1 1/4 cups caster sugar
    * 1 1/4 cups desiccated coconut

Lime syrup:
    * 3 limes
    * 1/2 cup white sugar

For the cake:
   1. Preheat oven to 180°C. Lightly grease and line a 6cm deep, 22cm
(base) square cake pan with baking paper.
   2. Melt butter in a saucepan over medium heat or zap it in a
heatproof jug in the microwave for about 20 seconds. Leave the butter to
cool a little.
   3. Beat eggs & milk. Then add the melted butter & beat.
   4. Combine flour, sugar and coconut in a bowl. Add in large
spoonfuls to milk mixture. Stir/beat until well combined. Spread mixture
into pan. Bake for 40 to 50 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the
centre comes out clean.

While the cake is baking - make the syrup:
   1. Zest the limes - I wind up with about a tablespoon of lime zest.
Juice the zested limes. You need 1/2 cup of lime juice - I find 3 limes
provide enough juice.
   2. Combine 1/2 cup lime juice and sugar in a saucepan over medium
heat. Bring to the boil. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 5-10 minutes
or until syrupy - it changes colour & goes a deep gold. Stir in lime zest.

When the cake is cooked & straight from the oven, pour hot lime syrup
over hot cake using a skewer to makes holes in the cake to help the
syrup soak in. Allow cake to cool in pan before cutting - though it is
ok to eat warm if you can't wait. wink

If you can't get limes, it works ok with lemons or oranges or a
combination of any of the three.

Re: Flame war on saving Chumby

@servalan - Yow! Now *that* looks good!

Re: Flame war on saving Chumby

In the past there have been lots of folks who disagreed with the mainstream direction of most Chumby users. Of course, Zurk was a big example. In his own thread,he provided his alternate solution here, rather than just flame unrelated threads. And then had the courtesy to leave this forum and start his own.

Anybody got a widget for converting grams of butter to tablespoons?

Re: Flame war on saving Chumby

Duane,

At the risk of prolonging the life of this thread long after it should have died, I was surprised by what you wrote here:

Duane wrote:

Exactly *why* can't you create your own Control Panel?

All the "secrets" you need to manage the device from Flash is in this source file. Everything else in the CP is stock Flash, which any competent developer could do, even with Open Source tools on the device itself, which I also provide here.

...

You don't need access to *anything* I have or know about about the current service to do what you're demanding.

That's what's so odd about's zurk's firmware - he spent all that time and effort to make the existing Control Panel happy with various hacks and scripts, when all he had to do is make a new one that did exactly what he wanted it to do.

How many lines of code are there in the standard Control Panel?  I'm sure you have a reasonable idea how much work an equivalent replacement would take to develop — your statement above hints that it would be easy though, which I find hard to believe.  From my perspective as a software developer I would guess that Zurk's approach took much less work and skill to accomplish than a complete rewrite would have.  While it's a pain to configure the channels by hand, the result performs just as well as or even better than the original — my Chumby One handles WiFi network I/O much better running Zurk than the online version, which could never play audio streams properly without them breaking up and soon stopping.

I suspect that many hackers (meaning competent coders with an interest in this kind of thing, not crackers) have converted to open source development tools and are running Linux nowadays. My household does not own any PCs running Windows, so I can't use the Windows-based Flash development environments which I assume make Flash development easier than writing ActionScript programs by hand.  Despite being a professional C developer I've never successfully coded a widget for my Chumby, and I pretty soon lost interest in trying.  My intuition suggests that the chances of someone successfully writing a new Control Panel from scratch are almost infinitesimal.

Now if the source code to the existing Control Panels could be made available under an open source license, I'd want to download and study them, compile them and try to make changes to fix things or add features — like the Cyanogen-Mod distribution of Android, which is very much community-driven. I would strongly encourage such a move if it can be done, although obviously not before the work you're currently doing to shore up the existing infrastructure is finished.

- Andrew

Re: Flame war on saving Chumby

My intention is to release the bulk of the Control Panel code as Open Source - I just can't do it now, since they contain stuff that belongs to other companies - trademarks, some libraries and API keys.  That all has to be split out.

The other issue is that the new servers are very likely to use completely different protocols in order to change the bandwidth profile for cost reasons.

The Control Panels also rely quite a bit too much on the Adobe Flash IDE - I'd like to see them be able to be built with Open Source tools.

One thing I can probably do is release various modules that clearly don't have third-party IP - network configuration, time settings, brightness controls, alarms, etc which would allow one to construct a Control Panel.  Some of the newer Control Panels - the Chumby 8 one in particular - are already very much structured that way.

The 3.5" Control Panel (CC, C1 and I3) is *very* old school - it's written in Actionscript 1 and much of the code is embedded in the FLA.  On the other hand, it's most understandable code for someone with a Javascript background.

As far as magnitude - the Actionscript 2 source for the C8 Control Panel is a bit over 5MB, the FLA with the graphics is about 6.1 MB, which together build a SWF that's 1.1MB.

Zurk did not actually modify the Control Panels themselves - they're completely stock.

Re: Flame war on saving Chumby

songmaster wrote:

I suspect that many hackers (meaning competent coders with an interest in this kind of thing, not crackers) have converted to open source development tools and are running Linux nowadays. My household does not own any PCs running Windows, so I can't use the Windows-based Flash development environments which I assume make Flash development easier than writing ActionScript programs by hand.  Despite being a professional C developer I've never successfully coded a widget for my Chumby, and I pretty soon lost interest in trying.  My intuition suggests that the chances of someone successfully writing a new Control Panel from scratch are almost infinitesimal.

Very well put Andrew!

The quoted paragraph pretty much describes me and my interaction with making changes for the chumby platform to a tee!  I was very gung-ho on contributing from the start, but have done very little because of the Flash/AS stuff.  If you see posts from me around these forums, they're usually kernel related because I'm familiar with it largely because it's open source.

Linux Guy - Occasional Chumby Hacker

Re: Flame war on saving Chumby

Actually, the IDEs don't really help that much writing the actual Actionscript - and I think you can use Eclipse, since that's what Adobe used for the Flex IDE.

I pretty much never wrote code using the Adobe tools - I always use TextMate on the Mac.

What the Adobe IDE is really about is the manual creation of "graphics" part of a Flash movie.  However, Actionscript has sufficient power over the internals of Flash to create graphics purely through code.

If you're familiar with MacOS or iOS development, it's a bit like the IDE is the Interface Builder plus a vector drawing tool, even though you can build everything with code if you want to (and many people do).

Many Flash devs used MTASC for AS2 development, and almost never used the Adobe toolset.  I've built that for Chumby, along with a variety of tools to convert fonts, build graphics from text, etc.  Technically, *everything* you need to build Flash movies, even to the level of a Control Panel, is there.

So, it's really not a matter of "can't" - for most devs, it really comes down to unfamiliarity with the framework, but that's true of any framework, not isolated to Flash.

Re: Flame war on saving Chumby

Since you've asked so nicely..

In the 70's I developed a full 6502 debugger/monitor for the Apple ][ which was on the market for a couple of years.

In the early 80's I developed industrial control software for automated factories and robotic manufacturing systems.

In the mid 80s, I reverse-engineered the bulk of the first Mac ROM, used that knowledge to help develop memory and processor upgrades (Levco Enterprises MonsterMac and Prodigy).

In the late 80's, I did the initial port of Pixar's Renderman rendering system (Reyes) to the Macintosh running the Inmos Transputer as an accelerator (also Levco).

In the early 90's I wrote an application called Gryphon Morph which was a best-seller for about 9 months, sold around a million units, and won dozens of industry awards, including Byte and two SPA "codies".  I was named "Developer of the Year" for edutainment CDROM titles published by Disney (ex Lion King Activity Center), many of which were million-unit plus best-sellers (this is back in the day of boxed software).  I developed about a dozen products for that company, most of which charted - Gryphon Bricks, Grpyhon Effects, etc

I developed number of Open Source end-user applications for Lindows/Linspire.

At Chumby, I wrote the initial server code, before it was turned over to a team. I did the port of the stock Adobe Flash Player Lite source code to Linux and then to the Chumby platform. I wrote the Control Panels for the CC/C1/I3, the Sony dash, and most of the basic infrastructure code for the C8 and I8 Control Panels. I wrote the code for most of the music sources, with the only exceptions of Pandora and IHR. I also am the single most prolific widget developer ( as dmaxwell) in the Chumby ecosystem, not even counting the ones published under the "chumby" account.  I also wrote the Chumby Android client. I wrote quite a bit of the middleware as well - the code that talks to the iPods, the wrapper for the FM radio, zeroconf, and other services.  Most of the hacks listed on the wiki (the various languages, etc) were done by me.

My current contract job is developing augmented reality mobile clients (iOS and Android) as well as the full server infrastructure supporting them.

These are just the highlights - I've done dozens of other things - automation of video decks, one of the first XML parsers for Smalltalk,  hard disk drivers,  parallel processing software, etc.

Suffice it to say, I know a *lot* about the current software and systems associated with Chumby, since I personally wrote at least part of most of them.  Following your analysis, that mean I probably wrote upwards of a million lines of code for Chumby.

Perhaps you're right - maybe this stuff just seems simple to me, because I've done it so much and for so long. I have, in fact, written a number of alternative Control Panels that never made it to the device.  When I want something done, I do it, even if I have to learn something first - I don't whine about how other people should do it for me.

So...exactly what are *your* qualifications to discuss anything remotely accurate about the Chumby systems, and why do you think you have standing to lecture me about software development?

Re: Flame war on saving Chumby

Duane wrote:

So...exactly what are *your* qualifications to discuss anything remotely accurate about the Chumby systems, and why do you think you have standing to lecture me about software development?

Well, there is the dragon avatar.....

Brian, #1 Joan Jett Fan

Re: Flame war on saving Chumby

I know!  Because he's in Seattle?  Even better than "sleeping in a Holiday Inn" if we're talking about software...

Re: Flame war on saving Chumby

Duane wrote:

So...exactly what are *your* qualifications to discuss anything remotely accurate about the Chumby systems, and why do you think you have standing to lecture me about software development?

:like:

village idiot wrote:

I know!  Because he's in Seattle?  Even better than "sleeping in a Holiday Inn" if we're talking about software...

:like:

Linux Guy - Occasional Chumby Hacker

22 (edited by infocastme 2013-02-02 18:59:59)

Re: Flame war on saving Chumby

Masterdaddy


:like: wink

Re: Flame war on saving Chumby

@Duane- no need to waste your time defending yourself against absurd scrutiny. Your qualifications speak for themselves. Why bother asking msharp what his qualifications are- why expect a true response? Just reading the history of Chumby shows you developed virtually everything except the hardware. That info is already out there to be found with a simple Web search, rather than wasting your time at this crucial point on this forum.

About 39,000+ users realize the great and creative work you've done. Your widgets alone speak for themselves.

On the other hand, maybe you're a Russian sleeper agent quietly working to sabotage American technology ever since the Cold War. Well, can you prove you're not??? That's as absurd as questioning your qualifications.

Save your typing fingers for more important efforts, like baking.

Re: Flame war on saving Chumby

Duane wrote:

Oh, the irony. It burns.

No kidding!

I also like how msharp42 says:

msharp42 wrote:

if you want ot write apps and the rest of the community does too -- can you let me know where i can download em ? cuz all i see is your great app collection shrinking on a daily basis as apps break and are unfixed.

Jeez, I barely know any code at all -- pretty much HTML is all I can do -- and even I figured out how to download the widgets I wanted for the offline firmware. I got the widgets that didn't have chumby.com dependencies running just fine. I had to drop a couple widgets I liked because they didn't work, but oh well.

On top of that, I added a brand-new clock widget that I liked on adorman's web page by downloading the swf file and just plunking it onto the USB. I won't say it wasn't difficult for me, but if I can do it, I can't even comprehend msharp's gripe here... If a coding numbskull like me can do it, a know-it-all like msharp ought to be able to.