So just what
is a
Chumby? Well, it's a Chumby, of course: a plush ball with a touchscreen, WiFi, accelerometer, squeeze sensor, and USB ports. Any attempt to shoehorn this device into an existing category of consumer electronics will be met with at least some amount of resistance. The basic idea is to combine some of the best ideas in glanceable information and entertainment -- an alarm clock, digital picture frame, bite-sized web clippings, and an iPod dock, for example -- with an utterly unique design (when's the last time you wanted to hug your alarm clock?) and an open, hackable architecture. Like
other projects of recent memory, the success of the Chumby will depend as much on the participation of the user community in creating, rating, and discussing widgets as it will depend on Chumby Industries' own efforts -- not to downplay the importance of the hardware, naturally. Read on for some quick impressions.
Update: We're happy to report that Chumby Industries contacted us regarding the white specks along the Chumby's side, and like many of our commenters have reported, they've never seen this issue before; they're expressing a new unit our way, so we expect a pristine bezel next time around. Chumby would also like to remind everyone that the units currently being sold are being coined an "Insider's Release" for a reason -- the software isn't complete and won't be until early '08 -- so just make sure you're cool with possible bugs, incomplete features, and frequent updates if you pop for an order in the meantime (though for what it's worth, we've seen zero issues so far with the software build we're running)!
The darned thing comes in a pretty high quality canvas bag, how cool is that? Even the power adapter comes in a smaller canvas bag stuffed inside the big one.
Basically, the way this works is that you can buy a production quality Chumby now but with the big, fat asterisk that it's running prerelease software. The company doesn't expect a gold release until early '08, so in the meanwhile, "Insider's Release" buyers get hooked up with periodic beta builds of the Chumby's Linux-based software stack. It's been rock solid for us so far; it connected to our WPA2 network effortlessly, downloaded and installed an upgrade, and a few seconds later we were up and running with some widgets we picked off the website. The widgets rotate in sequence among those selected to display in the currently configured "channel," and users can create as many channels as they like. We were a little disheartened by the number and variety of widgets available (seriously, only 26 clocks to choose from?) but again, the device's success all comes down to user-generated content as units start to proliferate among the populace.
We're less than impressed with the build and the quality of the Chumby's materials -- check out these indelible white speckles along the bezel's side, for example -- but on the other hand, it does a heck of a lot for the $179 asking price (and with any luck, it'll only get better with time as new widgets get created and uploaded). The object is mass production here, not necessarily perfection; we're sure the company would've loved to have been able to offer these for $99 or even $69, but the manufacturing costs just aren't there yet. Down the road, assuming these little buggers take off, we could see space in the product lineup for two or even three different models of various luxury and capability.
posted Nov 14th 2007 10:15AM
It's no iPod Touch though. j/k
@alex (lowercase):
I hope you do recall that the video game industry, and the whole handheld music industry started like this... No one "needed" games or ipods until they actually came out. No one "needed" cellphones (ham radio worked just fine :P), until they came out. Now, everyone's gotta have one.
I still don't see a reason why I would actually need this thing.
The purpose of devices such as this is not to fill an existing demand, but rather to fill a new niche, to create a demand where there was none.
I'd buy it just because you could use it as an alarm clock that is always accurate and one that you could throw across the room to turn off... :p
"The purpose of devices such as this is not to fill an existing demand, but rather to fill a new niche, to create a demand where there was none."
@Alex
So what you're saying is it's a solution in search of a problem? That's not a good business plan if these guys intend to make a go of this. Never has to my knowledge. On another note: am I crazy asking myself a question on a blog ;p
@ alex
I understand that, but an item like this would have to do something new in order for me to want it instead of integrating a bunch of devices into a pillow. Especially at 180 bucks. Maybe if it were around the 100 mark I would consider getting it for someone as a gift.
BTW My dog would destroy this thing.
Two Alex's?
I was responding to the first Alex. The one with the capital 'A'
The laser was a solution needing a problem, and now lasers are everywhere used in several different industries and devices.
So. This thing seems pretty similar to the Nabaztag, just more visual as opposed to the speech and sounds the rabbit makes. But the whole deal with the widgets, and user created content sure seems like a pretty novel idea.
Plus......I want to hug it!
It should be against the law to use the lolcats to showcase a new product!
oh hi i upvoted ur comment
Especially since that site stole all the images from various chans. Sometimes I wish people would use their copyright rights (the US has an opt-out system).
"lolcats" sucks. Stealing memes is not cool.
Because everyone who has ever made a lolcat pic has only used their own pictures. They've never taken (or stolen, according to you) random cat pictures from the internet and just added text or anything.
I never thought I'd see someone arguing copyright issues with lolcats. Now I know the world's become a sadder place. :(
I received mine (also black) yesterday. It was in excellent condition, with none of the white specks on yours. I'd recommend asking for a replacement unit.
As for the question about use, I'm sure more will come up as people experiment with the unit. For now, I have mine showing stock quotes, weather, and the Shamu Cam. :-) It's nice to have those on an external unit and not sitting as a widget on my PCs desktop. It will also grab stuff like eBay listings, if you're into that. It's almost like a little second monitor, with the content getting pushed to it.
Seconded. We got ours a couple weeks ago. It's also black and the build quality is great. No specks of any sort.
@Ron: "I received mine (also black) yesterday. It was in excellent condition, with none of the white specks on yours. I'd recommend asking for a replacement unit."
Seconded. I have two black ones and neither have the spots. Also, I don't see anything on either unit that would make me question the build quality or materials. The only thing I would say is a SLIGHT niggle is the choice of the switch on top. I haven't looked, but it feels like a long-armed microswitch. Hitting it square-on from the front could potentially bend it.
I've done a couple of apps now (one is even business ($$$) related!) and am loving 'em. Very nice box, GREAT support staff, great concept, great platform...
On a whim I got one of these when they were first "pre-released" earlier in the month. Got my RMA and I'm shipping it back today. Though the lack of useful widgets was a major dissapointment the touchscreen was the final straw. They put a poorly responsive $.25 touchscreen on a $179 device. Not good. The touchscreen is so hit and miss it quickly becomes annoying. Maybe they will come up with some killer apps for this in the future. Right now it's a very expensive, and annoying, alarm clock.
@ Doug "Though the lack of useful widgets was a major dissapointment the touchscreen was the final straw. They put a poorly responsive $.25 touchscreen on a $179 device. Not good."
I received mine yesterday and have been reading the forums at Chumby.com. A few people complained about the touch screen, enough to make me leery of the lil guy, but I find the screen to work very well. The Calibration screen features fat circles, when they should be cross hairs. There is no difference to the Touchscreen than on a Mobilepc, I was typing out sentences on the on-screen keyboard without a problem.
Touch with your fingernail, not fat finger tips. nufsaid.
Out of the box, the touch screen was horrific, but I recalibrated it after the Nov 7th software update, and now it works perfectly for me.
I told my wife last year all I wanted for Christmas was a Chumby, alas the product got delayed. Here we are a year later and that love that I once had for the Chumby has vanished. I suppose that's the risk you take with announcing a product years in advance, or being late to market with it. Don't get me wrong, I still think it's a very cool device, but now when I want glanceable info, I pick up my iPhone.
I do however still have a weather station sitting on my console table in the hallway that I glance at to get the weather before heading off to work. The Chumby could easily replace this. I could also see a use for it to perhaps sync up my calendars or display photos.
I sure hope they can sell a bundle of these things, because I'd still like to have one, but for me to jump now, I think it'd have to hit the sub $75 mark.
alan strangis: arue arue
Chumby: EPIC FAIL
The touch screen is pretty awful, I agree. Though, it works perfectly with a DS stylus (or the tip of a plastic pen), so I'm thinking its a software issue and not a hardware one.
Could I possibly run the Chumby software on another device? Does anyone know?
2 questions:
Can it play Doom?
Is there a Woot module?
Yes to both and I'm sold.
On the forum, it sounds like the user community may get it to run Doom, and yes, there is a Woot widget that I make sure to have on all my Chumby channels.
You can set up a virtual chumby on their website that gives you a pretty good idea of how the flash widgets work.
I got the pre-release model several months ago. What's great about Chumby is that it is becoming more useful as more developers sign up.
When I first got the device, it was a flickr photo viewer + alarm clock. Now it's a Saturday-morning cartoon player and iPod playback unit. In the next month or so I'm anticipating the internet radio feature to debut.
Woot module definitely FTW!
other than the baggy bottom, how would this be much different than my Nokia 770?
I had mine for 10 minutes and then the pressure sensor broke. However, their live instant chat made returning it very easy and fast.
GoodDoctor: I'm glad your screen works better than mine. I tried all the troubleshooting/calibration suggestions. Bottom line: When you tried to select someting on the screen it was a crapshoot. Interesting concept marred by poor execution. Maybe if they get enough of these units returned they'll spend another quarter on a better touchscreen display. Reliable input. Not too much to ask for on a $179 device.
For people who are questioning why anyone would want this, turn in your geek card now. It's just a cool gadget, it doesn't need to change your life. I got one of the insider ones a month or so ago and I play with it every day. I've got some RSS feeds like Engadget and F-Listed that I read on it every day while I brush my teeth. Also, I check my companies stock price (should take that one off, it makes me sad), enjoy the LOLcats, Chuck Norris facts, etc. And like people are asking, it even has a Woot widget. It does have issues, like the touch screen, and some usability problems, but I have faith those will be fixed in time.
For my purposes, I would want it to be:
1. Accurate alarm clock
2. A way to listen to the local AM radio station at night (when they lower the power and I cannot hear it) via streaming audio
3. A weather widget device
It might be worth $179 if it does all three well.
Hmm, I was heavily considering getting one of these for my girlfriend for Christmas (to use as a digital picture frame/iPod dock/facebook notifier), but maybe I'd be best to go with plan B and wait until this a bit more refined.
I've wanted a Chumby since I read about them about a year ago. I jumped at the chance to get in on the insiders launch.
I wanted it because I want an Alarm clock that can play streaming internet audio and also have alarms that can be set via the internet.
To be honest the alarm clock function is pretty poor. The streaming works but only if you ssh into the Chumby and, from a console login, start a stream. The only way you can play music as part of an alarm is to plug an iPod into the thing.
I like the Chumby a lot. Its a neat, hackable, little, Linux computer, but its not near ready for prime time. It really doesn't do anything that well yet. I believe it will get better in time and I am having fun hacking on it but I would strongly discourage any non-hacker type folks from buying it. They will be disappointed.
For everyone else I would wait and see what future updates bring. They promis a lot but I am doubtful because the primary purpose is displaying Flash-lite widgets. I don't see how they are going to make the other functions stronger when the widget part is clearly its primary purpose.
Oh and another little detail they don't make obvious. The thing sends little adds to the unit and you can't turn that off. You don't have to watch them, but it still feels kinda of lame.
As I said, I still think its a great, fun, gadget and the fact that its open source and open hardware is pretty amazing. All I am saying is skip it for now if you want something that is polished or you expect functionality beyond viewing Flash-lite widgets.
Weighing in as CEO to provide Chumby's perspective. To be clear, on a point that several of you are discussing, the chumby is *not* being provided for sale to the general public -- we are still very much in "Insider's Release," i.e., a pre-release stage where anyone who understands what this means (and we try to define this better on our site) can get a chumby device *now* -- this is someone who is willing to trade "feature completeness" and some polish in return for early involvement, early insight, and early "voice" in order to have realistic involvement in near-term product direction. If you go to the Forum on the Chumby web site you can see what level of voice people have and how much attention they get from the Company's management and engineers. If this is what you want, go for it, we're ready for you.
Chumby is indeed not fully ready for prime time and we're absolutely not saying that it is, i.e., don't buy one and give it to your grandma for Christmas, unless she's a tech geek. We really don't want to be reviewed as a finished, "street ready" product yet -- because we just aren't there. This will come in early '08. Therefore, waiting a couple of months to buy a chumby is a completely rational response and we encourage this if you're likely to be disappointed.
All this said, what Insiders (i.e., all early buyers) are going to get in a few weeks is access to our Beta software (with of course the easy ability to fall back to the more stable/finished version of the code) that will demonstrate that we are enabling a lot of the desires, and addressing a lot of the issues, that our early buyers are voicing -- *this* is the advantage of early participation. We are listening, we are adding, we are fixing -- this is our new model of consumer electronics product development (some of you are ready for it, some are not). We'll see what people think, but I believe those of you who own one are going to be really happy when you see these new capabilities.
Rather than try to go into any further detail here, I'll do a blog post on the Chumby site about this -- sorry for the self-promotion.
hey guys, wanna ask you something.
which do you think would be a better waste of my money, a chumby or the $200 linux running computer from wal-mart?
respond with ur answer people.