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General => Marketplace => Compatible Products & Services => Topic started by: desmarch on December 10, 2007, 09:10:10 pm

Title: The Chumby as an orbiter?
Post by: desmarch on December 10, 2007, 09:10:10 pm
Has anyone tried to use the Chumby (http://www.chumby.com/ (http://www.chumby.com/)) as an orbiter.
It seems it has all the prerequisite while being open source and cheap.
Your opinion would be appreciated.
Title: Re: The Chumby as an orbiter?
Post by: Matthew on December 10, 2007, 10:27:12 pm
The Chumby looks like it could be an Orbiter if it had more RAM, but its own Linux OS/apps would have to be wiped in favor of an LMCE Orbiter (probably netboot).

But it also looks like it would be a nice replacement for a SliMPlayer, with a featureful $180 (http://store.chumby.com/):
Quote
    *  3.5" LCD color touchscreen
    * iPodĀ® support
    * Two external USB 2.0 full-speed ports
    * 350 MHz ARM processor
    * 64 MB SDRAM
    * 64 MB NAND flash ROM
    * Stereo 2W speakers
    * Headphone output
    * Squeeze sensor
    * Accelerometer (motion sensor)
    * Leather casing
    * AC adapter included
    * Wi-fi connectivity
    * Access to the free Chumby Network
    * Over-the-air software updates

I'm impressed they can sell something like that for so little, without locking in subscriptions to their Chumby network service. I'd like to buy a version without the squeeze sensor, accelerometer, or tiny speakers/amp, which seems like a device that could cost about $100 as an audio streaming client. I don't know of another Linux machine that can also host a USB Bluetooth dongle for presence and BT speakers.
Title: Re: The Chumby as an orbiter?
Post by: teedge77 on December 10, 2007, 10:39:26 pm
uhhh....a touch screen pillow? or the bastard son of a headrest?
Title: Re: The Chumby as an orbiter?
Post by: darrenmason on December 10, 2007, 11:04:02 pm
I had the same idea a while back - but they are only shipping them to the US so I forgot about it.
Title: Re: The Chumby as an orbiter?
Post by: DeadPenguin on December 12, 2007, 12:56:47 am
Funny. I saw one of these on the Make mag site a couple weeks ago, and have been pricing them on Ebay.  Neat little device and its open and Hackable.
Title: Re: The Chumby as an orbiter?
Post by: billytwowilly on December 12, 2007, 06:09:19 am
It's gotta be plugged in at all time... This would be interesting if it had a battery and could go into sleep mode....
Title: Re: The Chumby as an orbiter?
Post by: ytuxedo002 on May 10, 2008, 08:50:34 pm
I would like to Bump this post.  I currently have a chumby and love it.  BUT! i would LOVE it more if i could use it in conjuction with LMCE.  Anybody got any ideas??
Title: Re: The Chumby as an orbiter?
Post by: darrenmason on May 12, 2008, 03:21:33 am
I have got one on the way and plan to try and get an orbiter on it.

Have you tried a web orbiter on it?
Title: Re: The Chumby as an orbiter?
Post by: tschak909 on May 12, 2008, 07:46:42 am
that is the most bizarre...
....
...

i find myself laughing, yet...strangely drawn to it....

it's kitch, and wtf!? in the same breath.

-Thom
Title: Re: The Chumby as an orbiter?
Post by: darrenmason on May 13, 2008, 12:58:24 am
So what colour did you get Thom :)
Title: Re: The Chumby as an orbiter?
Post by: ytuxedo002 on May 18, 2008, 01:07:57 am
I have got one on the way and plan to try and get an orbiter on it.

Have you tried a web orbiter on it?

Darren,

Did you finally get the Chumby?

Get it to work as an orbiter yet?? ;D
Title: Re: The Chumby as an orbiter?
Post by: darrenmason on May 19, 2008, 01:29:38 am
No havn't got it yet. Tracking said it left the US last week so sometime this week....
Title: Re: The Chumby as an orbiter?
Post by: darrenmason on June 22, 2008, 08:18:14 am
Update:

Well the thing arrived ( not long after the above post ) but I have just had it sitting doing whatever a standard Chumby does :)

Found a bit of time over the last few days so thought I would have a look at what it takes to get an orbiter running on it.

At first I thought of compiling natively for it (similar to Nokia 770 build) but using the Proxy Orbiter was also worth a shot.

There are still a lot of dependencies to build an orbiter so I decided to look into the proxy orbiter.

The proxy orbiter seems to work by rendering an obiter to a bitmap and receiving "press" events at co-ordinates on the bit map which it turns into DCE speak. So anything that can request an image over http and work out the x/y co-ordinates of each mouse press should be able to work with it.

The chumby has a natively compiled flashplayer which run flash 8. I figured that flash should easily be able to meet the requirements I mentioned above - problem is I have never written an flash programs and really don't intend to pay six or seven hundred dollars to get a dev environment. There is however an open source alternative and so I have been looking into  that.

And after some quick learning and hacking I now have linuxMCE orbiter running as a flash program on the Chumby :)
Performance is good and it has run faultlessly so far.
Resolution is 320x240 and it is running UI1 on its little screen which is just usable with my fat fingers.

So far there is a lot of hacks and hardcoding so I need to clean this up a bit before I make it available for testing. Also need to address refreshes as it currently only refreshes after you press the screen - so if the orbiter updates it will not push this out. This does not seem to impact usability too much though.
This is a standard chumby widget so it could just be added to a channel - however I would like it so that if you pick up the chumby and shake it it starts the orbiter and then if you shake it again it goes back to standard control panel. I think that this should be doable.

Once I clean up the code, I will post some wiki pages and the code/swf file for others to test.
(btw. This will work on anything that has a flashplayer and network connectivity)

Regards
Darren
Title: Re: The Chumby as an orbiter?
Post by: seth on June 23, 2008, 02:41:15 pm
 :)
This is great news. I am getting 2 of these little devices. Having an orbiter on my headboard, is a wonderful concept. I look forward to your code release, and If you ned any testing done... Let me know.

Should have them in the next couple of weeks.

Great Work,

Regards,

Seth
Title: Re: The Chumby as an orbiter?
Post by: ytuxedo002 on June 24, 2008, 01:04:42 am
Great work Darren.  Can't wait to see this widget.  I've had my chumby since my wife bought for me for christmas.  And i've been waiting for somebody to "break it in", so to speak.  Being a remote seems like the perfect next step.  Keep us updated and thanks again!!
Title: Re: The Chumby as an orbiter?
Post by: darrenmason on June 24, 2008, 01:23:42 am
Did some cleanup on the code last night and should be able to release a version tonight. Still need to get some of the variables moved out to a file or something. It will be good to have some testers.
Title: Re: The Chumby as an orbiter?
Post by: darrenmason on June 27, 2008, 01:30:56 am
Still going... Only getting half an hour here and there to work on it and each bit means quite a bit of research on ActionScript.

Testers please, to ready yourself. - make sure you have web orbiter installed and running well and you know how to get ssh access to your chumby and stop the control panel (all this info is on the Chumby wiki).

I finally got external configuration working last night but then had to go to bed, so I will try and post the swf file and instructions tonight.

At the moment everything is working well except my exit button. This does not work and I have no idea why. Anyone that knows actionscript is welcome to help - I have tried using fscommand("quit") but doesn't seem to do anything.
Title: Re: The Chumby as an orbiter?
Post by: darrenmason on July 10, 2008, 12:58:03 pm
Finally got a chance to put a (hurried) wiki page together.

See http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/ChumbyOrbiter

Looking for testers...
Title: Re: The Chumby as an orbiter?
Post by: darrenmason on July 11, 2008, 01:38:57 am
I have created a new thread in the Users forum to handle feedback on usage of the Orbiter...

http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php?topic=5742.0

Please post any experiences there..

regards
Darren