Comments on: My kind of bug

By: Aral

Aral — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 11:12:40 +0000

Hey Scott,

Sounds like a nice mod (your site’s telling me that the post is password protected so I can’t see it). If the Chumby _came_ like that, I’m sure they get far wider acceptance. And something cute as the default screen. Anything, really, to make it seem less like an alarm clock.

Violet have the right idea with the Nabaztag (which works beautifully even though it is tethered because it doesn’t have a screen).

By: Scott Janousek

Scott Janousek — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 02:06:10 +0000

Actually, you CAN make the chumby cordless by buying an ER Photo battery and doing some really really basic modding.

The end result? … I wouldn’t classify it as a “portable” device that I’m used to dealing with on a daily basis (aka a handset!), but it is untethered.

I get somewhere between 6 and 8 hours of life.

http://www.scottjanousek.com/blog/2008/01/04/chumby-runs-as-a-portable-device-with-a-simple-battery-mod/

By: Aral

Aral — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 18:55:25 +0000

@Thom: Cool stuff! :)

By: Thom Shannon

Thom Shannon — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 14:42:48 +0000

It’s like a more powerful, more polished arduino. Have you seen the Ardunio Lilly Pad? Imagine running a flash interface on your t-shirt! (disclaimer: yes I know the ardunios microprocessor won’t run flash)

Talking of hardware hacking and flash, I got a usb missile launcher for christmas and built a flash web interface for it, the camera feed streams with windows media so you may not be able to see it, when the next version of VLC is released I’ll try creating a live FLV stream! http://missile.glow-internet.com/

By: aYo

aYo — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 12:42:46 +0000

It sounds like fun but no Flash is definitely a downside

By: Tink

Tink — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 18:17:12 +0000

I know ya don’t want to mess with wires so these might not be ideal, but worth mentioning.

Make Controller – http://www.makingthings.com/products
Arduino – http://tinker.it/ukstore/product_info.php?cPath=29&products_id=36

Hopefully we’ll have some peeps from Tinker at LFPUG in the coming months and Leif presented on the Make Controller earlier this year.

By: Phillip Kerman

Phillip Kerman — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 21:19:42 +0000

I hear you about the powercord–in fact, I think this is going to be Chumby’s ultimate limitation… I’d say “downfall” but I don’t know if that’s really the case. Maybe just one killer app would fix Chumby.

By: Aral

Aral — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 20:38:45 +0000

Hi Philip,

One of the important differences for me is that the BUG works on batteries as well as AC. The Chumby doesn’t. As long as it’s wired, it’s really not much more than an alarm clock as far as I’m concerned. To really take off Chumby has to go wireless.

And, of course, I love the Lego-style plug-and-play modules.

No Flash == major bummer, though!

By: Phillip Kerman

Phillip Kerman — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 20:17:19 +0000

Looks neat–but I don’t think it’s really comparable to Chumby. For one, Chumby already has Flash on it. Via the two USB ports you could do much of what that BUG thing looks like will be able to do.

The mechanical interface of this does look cool.