Welcome to my Chumby development page. I am finally getting around to creating some content (outside of simple tests) for it.

I’ll keep some notes here as I make my way through designing and developing content for the Chumby Platform.

Chumby Log = “Log-umby”?

03/18/2006

• 12 FPS is the target for this device. The main swf of the chumby runs at 12, so anything loaded into levels or movieclips is going to run at that rate.
• Added object tag to virtual chumby. Seems the existing script doesn’t create an object tag … Might look into using SWFObject, etc.
• Yep, have to remember that there are NO DEVICE FONTS for the chumby. Embedding is required.
• Is it just me or is MSIE 7 problematic with upload chumby widgets. The upload page kept telling me that I had to specify a Flash movie (error: “Movie content type must be a Flash movie”). I tried outputting target content as both Flash Lite 2.1 and Flash Player 6 … both at 320×240 and 12 FPS, but no go. I switched to FireFox and it uploaded correctly! Bug?
• After uploading a chumby widget, user should be able to test/access on my widgets page. Streamline the process there. Add a link or something (really there needs to a developer’s work flow here).
• There needs to be a “chumby playground” of sorts for uploaded widgets. This is an area where uploaded widgets exist to be played with before making them public.
• Pretty obvious, but no device keys, must rely on touchscreen.
• Does chumby support any fscommand2 API? I’ve seen the custom native calls, but didn’t see any standardized API documented.
• Target FPS = 12 fps, but target player? Flash Player 6. Might (initially) confuse people that Flash Lite 2.1 doesn’t appear to be the output format.
• How about a nice Flex app for the chumby admin? I think it would be more efficient than the basic Web 1.0 UI …
• Wondering if chumby supports different character sets for internationalization of content …
• 100k is recommended max size for chumby apps, but what is limit? Hmmm.
• What kinds of icons make most sense for chumby … pushing, dragging operations.
• One button games for chumby? Add “Games” category to chumby index? Games that take less than a minute to play and win?
• Experiment with (mouse) up and down events on chumby …
• Definiately utilize hit areas in buttons as squares or more solid objects since it’s touchscreen and user may have difficulty pressing a button … people with “fat fingers”, usability? Bigger buttons? Options to increase button size profile based on their preference? Could this be stored on chumby sever and then queried?
• Default playtime is 15 seconds (but can be changed). What is the max, I wonder?
• Wonder if it’s possible to setup a schedule for channels, as opposed to having to manual change them. More thinking needed here on how that would actual work (well).
• Anyway to force a widget change? After uploading an existing chumby widget, takes 5-10 minutes to replace it in cache … pain during development and testing.
• Introducing ads into chumby apps in banner like fashion … is this a viable revenue stream? How could that affect user experience … must be done lightly as there could be potential for abuse here.
• When reuploading a chumby widget, you should have to specify a new .swf and/or graphic … it should reuse the ones on the server (if not specified) … UI needs to be worked around a bit … basically, the need is just to update the elements you want to change and not have to reupload them all. UPDATE: Never mind, seems I must have missed this? Anyways, an “update all feature” would be nice here.
• On the “my channels” page, you should be able to sort, search and better organize the channels. Basically, I can see a lot of problems later as people have more than say 10 channels. A Flash UI to manage would make the most sense here (to me).
• After uploading a widget … it would be nice to have the version # displayed whever a widget is displayed in an admin page for channels. During development I might have multiple versions and want to know which one is running. Granted, could display version # in content, but would be nice to have automatic … wondering if this is possible through another means. It’s on my list.
• Chumby animations based on light sensor and time of day?
• Can I make widgets public anywhere else but the upload screen? Seems like this would be easy enough to administrate elsewhere in the admin … again, but to redesigning the existing Web 1.0 admin.
• “Channel changes may take 5-10 minutes to take effect on the chumby.” - Again, it’s annoying to have to wait 5-10 minutes for the widget to be brought down … is there a way to force it down? Testing on the actual chumby is an essential piece of Flash Lite development. Please make this possible.
• Chumby froze (3/18/2006 with .9 SW update and latest firmware update) … not sure why. Rebooted.
• Wondering if onEnterFrame() is a bad thing on the chumby … is it cleaning up properly? I was utilizing for some UI … hmmm.
• Seems my network config drops everyonce in a while and there’s no notification on the chumby … it just reverts to the default chumby clock … wish it could actually notify me somehow … also, I could have sworn I lost my network config for no apparent reason.
• Wrote a simple “Chumb-ilities” widget to report back on Flash Lite System.capabilities.object … looks like it doesn’t support shared objects … but I’ll have to double check the wikipedia.
• Rebooting Chumby, network copnfig wasn’t working even though I thought I was entering correct info for WPA2 (and it WAS working before).
• May add sailboat or birds to “chumb-ility” Flash Lite app …
• Wonders if it would be a useful feature to disable sound on bootup through settings. Bubble SFX can get annoying.

System.capabilities Object:

Note: First, some properties are empty (such as VideoMIMETypes, etc).

Note: Chumby capabilities are subject to change. This was dumped as of 3/18/2007 with software update .9 and firmware version 1.28.

Chumby experiments:

Coming Soon …

That is all (for now).