Unboxing Chumby and My First Impressions
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.
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.
