Earlier this week I finally received my Chumby, a small soft hardware device with a color touch-screen, speakers, an accelerometer sensor and squeeze switch (amongst other features). It took until this weekend for me to unwrap it and hook it up.
There are plenty of other blogs describing the out-of-the-box experience, so I’ll just briefly mention my first impressions:
- The device’s build quality is good, but I had been hoping for more out of the squeeze sensor than what’s built in.
- Just in case you didn’t pick it up from other posts, this is a tethered device – requires a “wall-wart” power adapter. I may look into short-life-span battery power for the thing, primarily because I see this developing into an audience-interactive MIDI controller (assuming I ever perform live again).
- It was very, very simple to get up and running.
- If you have a full-length WPA2 password on your wireless, be prepared to “type blind”. The entry box isn’t large enough to display every character. On the confirmation screen it will display the entire password for you.
- Yay Linux.
- Yay SSHD built right into the control panel (through a hidden screen).
- I need to re-study ActionScript. At least there is an open-source flash development alternative. The last place I used this stuff would have been for former employer DentsuFUSE and the Dentsu Ad Museum (anyone in Tokyo know if the exhibit is still running?)
The following picture should say it all (yes, that’s ICHC on the chumby) :
If Ecchi approves, it’s a guaranteed hit.