Chumby Review

Note: I wrote this review back in late 2007 and it continues to get a lot of traffic.  I’m thrilled that you’re here.  If you’re interested in my family-friendly game reviews, check out my contributions at http://www.TechTalkforFamilies.com

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And now…on with the Chumby review.

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As mentioned in episode #63 (My Shiny Thing), I have a new piece of technology in my life. I’ve been selected to serve as a beta-tester for the Chumby.

As soon as the beta-test is done (sometime in Q4 2007), you’ll be able to buy one of your very own. Let me tell you what to expect.

The Chumby is a small, internet-connected computer/clock. It’s about the size of a Nerf football and is contained in a soft case. A panel on the back offers an on/off switch, two USB ports, and a place to plug in the power cord. On the opposite side, a 3.5” color LCD touchscreen displays information and accepts your input. Buried inside you’ll find a battery connector (9V for keeping the Chumby during blackouts) a small, Linux-powered computer which includes a wifi connection.

Because the connection is wireless, you can put it anywhere that a wifi network is available.

Which brings me to the whole point of the Chumby. Instead of being a passive clock, it’s an active, general purpose computing device which can be configured to pull information off of the internet. The programs which collect and display the information are called “widgets” and you can find dozens of them on the Chumby website at www.Chumby.com.

Widgets range from on-line weather reports, to your Ebay bidding status, to an RSS feed reader to entertainment and sports news and photo viewers of various kinds. Widgets are written in Flash and the specs are freely available. In fact, the specs for everything in the Chumby are freely available. The creators wanted an open architecture and encourage people to hack the machine … inside and out. There is an entire section of the forum devoted to changing the exterior case of your Chumby. The most striking mod I’ve seen is a handsome wooden case. Once this thing gets out on the market, I expect (and hope) to see all manner of bizarre Chumbys.

More importantly, I expect people to hack the code and come up with new and interesting widgets and even modifications to the firmware.

The Chumby arrives in a clever jute bag arrangement which doubles as a carrying case. (The theory being that the Chumby is so darned cute you’ll want to take it with you to visit your friends, I suppose.)

Booting the Chumby involves plugging it in and turning it on. Connecting to a wireless network is pretty simple and only requires that you select the appropriate network and (if necessary for the network) enter an encryption key.

The next step is activating the Chumby by way of the Chumby website. Activation puts your Chumby in contact with the Chumby mothership. Adding widgets and configuring them is handled via the website as is grouping them into categories called “channels”.

Once activated, your Chumby displays the channel of your choosing, looping endlessly through the widgets you’ve selected.

Some of the widgets are interactive (touch the ‘Play’ button on the YouTube widget and the video plays). It’s important to remember, though, that the Chumby is essentially a passive device. Once you’ve configured it, you really don’t need to interact with it much. Just absorb the information as it passes.

The more active features of the Chumby include two alarms (which can play one of three different pre-recorded files) and an iPod player/charger.

At present, the iPod player is limited because it won’t play DRM files. So, most of what you buy from the iTunes store won’t play. However, mp3 files play just fine. One beta tester has reported using a first-gen iPod Shuffle (which can be picked up on Ebay for a song) as a tune repository and using the Chumby as a set of speakers.

The code for streaming mp3 playback is buried in the guts of the device and the creators have promised to work on that feature. In my mind, the ability to play Podcasts straight from the web would make the Chumby a truly awesome device.

The Chumby is going to retail for around $180 and it’s difficult to tell if that’s too high or too low. The openness of the Chumby means that users will be able to create the apps that drive the device. Historically, the more open a technology is, the better it will perform in the marketplace. I hope this holds true for the Chumby. From a geek standpoint it’s a wonderful toy right now. I’m hoping that the user/creator community will embrace it and create the “killer” app which makes Chumby the “must have” device of 2008.

The Chumby is now officially for sale at store.chumby.com. The price is $179.95 (pretty much what I expected) and I think they have found the killer app.

The latest update of the Chumby control panel includes extensive options for playing streamed audio from the internet. You can pull down anything on ShoutCast to listen to wherever you keep your Chumby. You can also pull from Radio Free Chumby (a set of pre-installed audio streams) or any internet audio stream which uses the MP3, M3U, OGG or PLS formats.

All of this can be tied into the highly customizable alarm clock system.

So, my Chumby is set to wake me at 5:45 a.m. on weekdays with the audio stream from my local NPR station. And if I take my Chumby on the road, I just reset the time zone and I can still (if I have wifi access) wake to the sound of the news from home.

And now that the Chumby is out in the “wild” the widgets are proliferating. Miss Letterman’s Top Ten List? Chumby’s got you covered. Want video from the CBS Early Show? No sweat.

When I first wrote this review, I noted that the Chumby was a promising device. With the new software (which, incidentally, installed itself with only minimal help from me) the Chumby is maturing to a highly desirable home internet appliance.