Hands-on with the Chumby
So in a not very well lit room we got our meat hooks on a cuddly wuddly Chumby. You can probably tell we're trying hard not to use the phrase "got chummy with Chumby." Anywho, Chumby: lumpy and squishy and oh-so adorable, we couldn't help but want one planted right on our night stand. If the concept of Chumby still eludes you, just imagine an almost entirely open-source device (hardware included) designed to run widgets assigned via a web interface, intended to sit somewhere useful and give glanceable information -- probably by your bed. Click on to check out this early Chumby build!
The "shell" this Chumby had was that standard nylon / rubber-foam looking one the other prototypes had -- but Chumby's intended to be used in any kind of shell you can come up with.
Bootin' up.
That right eye turned into an A when it wasn't booting properly. Hey, it's a beta!
Ah, PandaCam! Sorry, no panda in there right at the moment.
So this is Chumby's dashboard. The left and right arrows scrolled through the Flash Lite 2 widgets in thecenter. Obviously this one was the gCal widget.
The time! Love that faux greenochrome LCD.
We just couldn't help squeezing Chumby, like, constantly!
Did we mention Chumby has a squeeze sensor?
... squeezing a little harder.
Date / time setup.
Unfortunately the music function wasn't yet working.
Naturally we had to figure out every which way you can customize the little bugger.
WiFi support was good!
Not bad on the reception.
It even supports WPA2! Hot damn! Thanks to Niall for the QT spent with the little bugger!
