Every Flavour Beans

I have written about unboxing and my very first impressions about Chumby - yet another Linux powered portable device - in my previous post. As promised in that post, here are more details about the device itself, more specifically, some different ways in which a Chumby can be put to use. This post is about the positive side of the Chumby experience; I will write about the negative experience in the next post. I do recommend reading the first part about Chumby linked above and then comeback here to read more about it.

What Chumby is - and is not.

If you are new to the town, Chumby is:

“a compact device that displays useful and entertaining information from the web using your wireless internet connection. Always on, it shows — nonstop — what’s online that matters to you.” [Chumby.com]

What you also need to know right at the beginning is that (1) it is not a battery operated device: it needs to be plugged into a power outlet all the time to work; and (2) it is mostly a read-only device where you add your favourite sources from web (in the form of flash “widgets”) and then let Chumby do its job. You can interact with it, of course, but be forewarned if you are planning to use it to browse the internet using it, for example, because it is not possible yet and will not be in the near future. Many people impressed by its feature list are placing the order and later when the reality dawns up on them, are ending up frustrated. (Note: people have tried to get rid of the permanent AC connection and run Chumby on battery power but it is not for the regular users.

To help make an informed purchase decision, let me go through some of the popular uses that a Chumby device can be put through. These are by no means the only ways to use a Chumby, as by design, and because of the underlying Linux core, Chumby is supposed to be extremely customizable in terms of how you can use it, but the following examples should give you a good start. You can find lot of pictures of and introduction to Chumby in my previous post and more information on the Chumby website.

Five great ways to use Chumby

1. Chumby as a clock/alarm clock. You might not want to spend $180 to buy an alarm clock but Chumby does look very cute; can display clocks with 25+ different looks and styles(currently; you or your friends can make a clock with your own custom style with minimal knowledge of Flash); one of the clocks can even “chime” every 15 minutes like regular clocks; you can use your favourite song(or soundtrack from SAW IV :D) as the alarm sound; and you can set two alarms at a time, which means two family members can set their own alarm times independent of each other. But Chumby is not just an alarm clock :)
2. Chumby as a Digital Photo Frame/Web 2.0 updates. Again, who would like to spend $180 on a photo frame? Even if it can display any of the millions of photos available on the web? Or in fact run a slideshow of some of the best photos available on Flickr or Photobucket? Hmmm…perhaps the photos from your birthday party? a trip to Sri Lanka? college reunion? Think about the possibilities to show-off the best moments of your life ;)

   Let’s look at it from another angle. You can set Chumby to display statuses and updates from your web profiles too: Facebook status and friends’ updates, Twitter tweets, EBay auction bids, Craiglist, Netflix queue/new releases etc. Support for other popular web 2.0 apps should be available soon - think about Jaiku, Pownce, blog visitor analytics, Remember The Milk/Backpack etc. You can also set it to display weather forecast for the next few days. It can even display the email fetched from a POP server.

3. Chumby as an RSS Feed/News Reader. If you want to wake up to the latest headlines from NYT, Huffington Post, Google News; or if you are technically inclined, then to Wired, Slashdot, TechCrunch, Engadget, Gizmodo, GigaOM; then Chumby can be your best bedside companion(non-living at least!). You can select the sources from which feeds/news stories should be displayed on Chumby, and also for how much duration and in what order they should be displayed. Lot of news sources are available as Chumby widgets currently, but the Chumby widget directory is set to burst open in the near future with more web content than you would like to handle.

   A note of warning though: plan to use Chumby only to have a look at the most important headlines/summaries from your fields of interest. Don’t expect to be able read the whole news stories on it; though it is possible in theory, but as things stand currently, it will be a frustrating experience to try to do so in my opinion. An example is the Digg widget. It is useful if all I want is to have a look at all the important Digg headlines. But regular Digg users will feel frustrated when juicy titles scroll over the Chumby screen and they can’t click on them to go to the main story page or can’t digg or bury the story. (Same applies to other news sources like NYT and Wikipedia, though they scroll the text down slowly so that you can read more than just the headlines.)

4. Chumby as a gaming device. It’s now time to admit it: all the motivation behind any human activity can be attributed to the attempts to turn every invention into a fun device. Chumby is built to be a fun device. Sudoku has two secret goals of its invention: a) conquer every possible device on the planet; b) taking help from (a), don’t let any work from ever getting done. Reports say that so far it has been largely successful in its goals, so you can guess that it is available for Chumby too. Besides Sudoku, there is Slide puzzle, Space Dodge, Dizzy Zub Zub. My pick? Chong! Play it, beat Chumby and come back and tell me how much fun it is :)

   What makes the prospect of gaming especially appealing on a Chumby is that you can use its touch interface as well as the motion detector to interact with the games. Only a handful of games are available currently but I am expecting a lot more interesting games to be developed in the next few months(now that the Chumbys are available to everyone in the US at least).

   A tip for playing games on Chumby: whenever you want to play a game displayed on the Chumby screen, squeeze the top of the device to go to the Control Panel and tap on the “Stay” button to make the game sticky. The game will not be removed from the screen now until you tap the “Stay” button again to make it un-sticky.

5. Chumby as iPod speakers or a music device (and IPTV?). To be honest, this was my fallback option at a time when I wasn’t really sure how much the “static” Flash widgets could really be of real use to me(I know now!). If nothing else, I had thought, I can always use it (1) as speakers to the three different iPod devices that I own; (2) as a music device by streaming media from a media server like SlimServer; and then wait for the community to do something cool with it :) Connecting an iPod is as simple as connecting it to Chumby’s USB port and then playing songs using its touch interface. Sound quality is not too good though, definitely can not be used as a dedicated music device. Tuning to Internet radio stations is an easier option if you don’t want to install and configure a media streaming software. How could it have missed the FM tuner chip though?! I hope it will be added at some point in the future. Though there are many other ways to play music on it but none of them are straightforward at this point of time.

   Chumby can play videos from Youtube and other sources too as long as they are in the Flash format, but not many video sources are available in the directory presently. It has a huge potential to be a portable IPTV in the future where you can pre-configure and watch streamed flash video much like you watch the traditional TV shows. At this time, I can not count it as a major feature for lack of easy choices in terms of video sources(not much other than Youtube and Anime videos for example).

Among other things, you can also chat with other Chumby users, share electronic greeting cards with them and use it as a web server. Or do stuff like this.

As you can notice, I haven’t talked about the hardware/physical aspect of Chumby in this post. For such information, go to Christine.net, Engadget, TechCrunch(these are all old articles) and Chumby.com itself. As I had noted in the first part, this is the second of the three part series about the Chumby device; in part three of it, I will write about my disappointments/complaints with the device(there are many! for example, text to speech and good video support are high on the list) and how some of them can possibly be addressed. I am not sure about it but I might also make a separate post showing how to setup Chumby with all the goodies discussed above(clocks, news feeds, games, iPod etc.).

I don’t make a lot of shopping decisions based on an impulse, but in a rare case about a month ago, that is, the very first day I read about Chumby on its website, I registered my email for an invite notification. And the very day I got the invitation, I placed the order for it. So what prompted me to show such a deep interest in a product after reading for only 5-10 minutes about it? It was the open nature of the product’s design philosophy on both the hardware and the software front.

The team was excited to release the schematics and source code as part of the chumby launch strategy. The chumby license grants users the rights to use and modify the device, but withholds patent royalty rights. [...] The team is encouraging users to hack the device (they even included a parts list) and sell small apps, but not use the hardware in ways that end-run the chumby creators. [christine.net]

It is hacker-friendly, easily customizable, built on the Linux platform and hence guaranteed to attract a large user and developer community . And of course, it comes at a low cost of $180 :) Chumbys are now available to everyone in the US(international shipping not yet available), no invitations are needed any more. After a wait of almost 25 days, I finally received my Chumby a couple of days ago. What follows are my first impressions about the device.

My Chumby Review

If you don’t know what a Chumby is, head over to Chumby.com to get a basic idea about it. In short:

The chumby is a compact device that displays useful and entertaining information from the web using your wireless internet connection. Always on, it shows — nonstop — what’s online that matters to you. [Chumby.com]

But as I have noted earlier, Chumby can be customised or re-skinned to mean any of the several things(clock, news reader, portable IPTV etc.) according to one’s own requirements. My entire next post will be dedicated on elaborating this.

I was pleasantly surprised to see Chumby delivered in a brown coloured cloth bag instead of the typical shiny and colourful card boxes. The colour and texture of the bag reminded me of the khadi material popularised in India by Gandhi during the Freedom movement(of course I don’t know what material the bag is actually made of, but I am guessing it is environment friendly at least. Thanks to Anmol for informing in the comments that it is made of jute).

When I opened the bag, all the contents were placed in their own little pouches, like the power adapter and the Chumby Charms. Here is a picture showing all the contents that came with the Chumby package(click on any picture to view the enlarged version):

A note about the power adapter since it had bugged me for a while: the power rating(Input AC: 100-240V, 50/60 Hz) itself should be compatible with power output ratings of most(all?) countries but the prong may not fit physically into all outlets. I had no such problems though as I use surge protectors that take almost any kind of prong configuration.

Chumby itself from different angles:

Doesn’t it look very cute? I bet you can trick your friend into believing that it is an Apple product ;)
You can see a plastic cover over the screen of Chumby in some of the above pictures. It is supposed to be removed before use but don’t worry - there is another, almost invisible, screen protector on the screen which will prevent the scratches and dust from spoiling it. I am wondering which protective covers I need to buy in case I want to replace the current one.

The first time I connected the device to power outlet and powered it on, it took me through an interactive tour explaining some important features of Chumby. It was fun! Watch it yourself if you want:

[uploaded by youtube user bethgoza]

In the end, it prompted me to configure the wireless connection, set the time zone and stuff like that, all of which was a total breeze, and then finally prompted me to install one of the available updates. It warned me that the power should not be disconnected while the firmware update was in progress but it would have been more useful if the warning had been given before starting the update; I would have connected it to the UPS before updating. Fortunately, no mishaps occurred.

When the update was over, Chumby displayed a beautiful blue clock showing the current time.

(Oh, I forgot. Somewhere in the middle, I was prompted to activate the device which involved going to Chumby.com, clicking on some ovals and entering an n-digit key. Pretty straight-forward.)
I quickly went to the Chumby website, created a new channel, filled it with a preliminary set of interesting widgets and set the Chumby to this channel. Gratification at last! The device now temporarily adorns the right corner of my desk. It supports a night mode that darkens the display out so you can activate it before going to bed if you have set an alarm and want to leave the device powered on.

Default Mode	Night Mode

I plan to write a lot more about Chumby - what kind of interesting uses it can be put to, what are my biggest complaints about it(there are many!) and perhaps also a walk-through on how to set it up with interesting channels and in other configurations. Let me end for now with another quote from Duanne’s blog post:

Hopefully this and my previous post today provide a sense of where we’re headed with the chumby — an inexpensive device that you can make into whatever you want it to be, and that takes a bunch of the services that you can find in a range of other products like digital picture frames, weather stations, internet radios and delivers them all in a neat little package controlled by a really simple web-based interface. Just plug it in, create a widget channel for it at chumby.com, and you’re in business.

Update: A very similar review of Chumby to mine is posted by Joel Evans at Geek.com. In fact, I discovered it over my Chumby’s screen through the Google Blogsearch widget! You can also read an old article on Engadget and search for Chumby youtube videos.

My second post on Chumby is up now: Five Interesting Ways to Use a Chumby That Might Make You Buy It. Working on the third part.