chumby
 

would it be possible to run the chumby os on the IT?

http://files.chumby.com/source/

Re: chumby
 

Probably, but I don't think it'd be a good idea.

Re: chumby
 

Why not? I would like to be able to use my n800 like a Chumby sometimes... Or at least what I think a Chumby would be like.

Re: chumby
 

This shouldn't be too hard. Don't have the time right now but here's what you need to do:

Sign up on their page. Set up you channel.

They offer code to embed that channel in a webpage...

The thing is that their "virtualchumby" is pretty much what you want except the ugly box around the screen.

So... find string like this in the embed code: http%3A%2F%2Fwww.chumby.com%2Fxml%2Fvirtualprofile s%2FB26BB7F8-6B3D-11DC-9FAD-0030488CBE0D&baseURL=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.chumby.c om

convert all the gibberish and you will get a link to an xml file - like this : http://www.chumby.com/xml/virtualpro...D-0030488CBE0D

Now in that XML file are direct links to the flashfiles chumby is playing.
Like this: http://www.chumby.com/xml/movies/BB9...9-0030488E34F8
So all you need is to put some love in a little php scipt and the n800 will be you new chumby :)

Have fun!

(and let me know if it works for ya)

Re: chumby
 

Effort:Payoff ratio is EXTREMELY high, ergo bad idea :)

Virtual Chumby sounds pretty awesome, though.

Re: chumby
 

I'll give it a go and report back. This might be over my head though - like - I need to figure out how to write a php script... I'll let you know how things go.

Re: chumby
 

Alright, was too tempted to try this myself...

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...12993164&hl=en

Ok here we go :
1. get the (crappy) code from http://pastebin.com/m4cc969de
2. Put it on some webserver that supports php
3. make sure to name the file ctest.php (or change line 116 accordingly)
4 .Change the chumby feed address in line 93 to your chumby channel (as described in my prev. post).
5. Enjoy you n770/n800/n810 as a "chumby viewer" works like a charm here.


Please note: The code is just a quick hack. A couple of things are not supported, like custom timeouts for each widget and other time modes. Feel free to add them :)

Re: chumby
 

Hahaha.. that's awesome. Good job.

Re: chumby
 

I don't have a php server to test this on, but it might make a nice addition to the jablet.net site, Jay. I was playing with a free "virtual Chumby" yesterday and it already has some nice widgets with more being added all the time. The whole project is very open source, open hardware. Nice to see.

Would also be cool if someone could write a maemo screensaver that uses the Chumby streams. Unfortunately I don't code.

Re: chumby
 

Hmm... agreed.

Re: chumby
 

Far from being able to do any of this stuff myself, but I'm surprised that the "chumby" (or konfabulator/widget/dashboard/gadget stuff) hasn't already been embraced by folks who have the latest greatest gadget yet. (that being the
nXXX series in my biased view)
Isn't that a big part of the promise of the internet tablet? To be an at-your-hand information gadget?

I'm far from the coding type of guy who can whip this stuff up, but even I have spent some time trying to figure out the basics of the 'widget' world to see if I can help port this stuff to the Maemo platform. (If you are wondering, I ended up looking at gDesklets and SuperKaramba, but haven't figured out where to go from there, or which would be a better base to work off of. Hints, tips, outright information appreciated).

I tried to look up the weather for this afternoon before going out, and unlike my other desktops, I felt like I had to jump through hoops to get the info on my ITT (and the wireless was so slow that I went out without it, just to have the temp drop ~15 degrees on me, hah!)

I applaud the Chumby and its goals, and I even more applaud the effort to take that sort of information applet worldview and apply it to the ITT. Thanks folks!

Re: chumby
 

Nice. That worked. So, when php is up and running for the 2008 OS presumably ctest.php could live locally on the N8x0?

Re: chumby
 

I think the Chumby widget is cool, but for weather I have omweather installed as a desktop applet and it will keep track of many locations and days of weather. No hoops to jump through. Just click on update or have it update every x hours.

Re: chumby
 

Yes, the Chumby thing is not good for on-demand information. I don't think there is any way to jump to a particular widget when you want it. It just rotates through the widgets you selected at a predetermined pace.

But Chumby is still fun. Zerojay and I are both interested in making it more usable for tablet users. Zerojay is doing some testing at jablet.net

Re: chumby
 

Anyone interested in trying it out for themselves on their tablets, let me know. Sign up for Chumby and send me the info for your channel and I'll send you a link you can use for your personal channel.

Re: chumby
 

It would be nice if Chumby's real estate could be reduced just a bit. Also, I asked jay about context-sensitivity with the widgets... something to look into.

Re: chumby
 

There's certainly the scope to do these things, there's just not that much screen real-estate to use (that's my problem with applets anyway). Perhaps we need some sort of parent applet which can be used to quickly select which of its children to display.

The Chumby stuff looks quite fun, the applets themselves are Flash, I don't know whether the applets are open-source, but it ought to be possible to write a flash container app to sit on the desktop and do something similar (perhaps even with the same code). Might make the rest of the system rather slow though.

Re: chumby
 

I don't think that chumby is the way to go for desktop applets. It's allright for what it's meant for and it is nice that i can watch a chumby channel while the n800 is sitting on my desk - but that's about it. Especially for a mobile device i think it's worth to put some time into developing custom widgets/applications. Certain constraints (battery life, screen size, user interface) can only be addressed that way.

Re: chumby
 

Yes please. I will send you a PM with the info.

Thanks!

Re: chumby
 

Zeez's php code worked for me on the first try. But, for some reason my selected widgets are not showing my customizations, like the proper city for the weather widget. Any clues on why? You would think once the correct profile was used it would automatically include the customizations?

Re: chumby
 

Actually the customizations are parameters that have to be parsed from the xml file and then passed to the flash file. It is very likely that a bunch of stuff doesn't work bc i have just tested like 4-5 widgets. Take a look at the code & the xml file to see what's wrong or post your channel here (or at least the xml file of it)

Re: chumby
 

I looked at your PHP code and I see how its supposed to work, but for some reason the $name and $value variables don't seem to be getting the the values of the <name> and <value> widget parameters on lines 105 and 106 of your PHP.

Here is the XML from one widget that isn't getting its parameters:

−<widget_instance>
−<widget>
<name>NOAA Weather (US)</name>
−<description>
Current weather conditions and forecasts for the United States, courtesy of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
</description>
<version>1.3</version>
<mode time="15" mode="default"/>
<movie href="/xml/movies/E3791136-9AB6-11DB-AC1C-0030485A78AA" contenttype="application/x-shockwave-flash"/>
</widget>
<mode time="15" mode="default"/>
−<widget_parameters>
−<widget_parameter id="9BCAD208-98ED-11DC-87B3-0030488E34F8">
<name>zipcode</name>
<value>85750</value>
</widget_parameter>
</widget_parameters>
</widget_instance>

And here is the relevant part of the page source when I view the PHP page with a browser:

src="http://www.chumby.com/xml/movies/E3791136-9AB6-11DB-AC1C-0030485A78AA" FlashVars="=&=&=&" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer"

It looks like the PHP code is looping through the widget parameters but just inserting nulls for the parameter names and values, as shown by FlashVars="=&=&=&"

Here is my profile link: http://www.chumby.com/xml/virtualpro...2-0030488E34F8

Re: chumby
 

I am working on adapting the standard "virtual chumby" to fill the screen of the IT. It does work with parameters, timings etc.

It's not perfect, but have a look at
http://technut.canada.googlepages.com/chumby.html
on your IT. You need to be in fullscreen and turn off "Fit to width".

I'm still tinkering, need to mask the sides off... works in FF and IE but not completely in MicroB yet. Haven't tried Opera.

zerojay plans to host Chumby pages at Jablet in future, and will set one up for you now by request (post #15 in this thread).

For more info on the jablet.net version, see
http://jablet.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2&start=9

Re: chumby
 

I figured out how to change your php code so it passed the parameter properly for my one widget with a single parameter. See below. Of course my revised code probably won't work right when there are multiple parameters for a single widget.

for ($j=0;$j<sizeof($a['profile']['widget_instances']['widget_instance'][$i]['widget_parameters']);$j++)
{
$name = ($a['profile']['widget_instances']['widget_instance'][$i]['widget_parameters']['widget_parameter']['name']['value']);
$value = ($a['profile']['widget_instances']['widget_instance'][$i]['widget_parameters']['widget_parameter']['value']['value']);
$param = $param.$name.'='.$value.'&';
}

Re: chumby
 

If i can find the time, i'll update the code and also add the timer stuff... we'll see :)

Re: chumby
 

Zeez: I played with the code a bit more and found that my revision posted above doesn't work when a widget has multiple parameters, and your original version doesn't work if there is only one single parameter for a widget. Trouble is, I can't figure out how to test for the number of parameters a widget has because this:

sizeof($a['profile']['widget_instances']['widget_instance'][$i]['widget_parameters']['widget_parameter']

Seems to return the correct number of widget parameters only if there are more than one widget parameter. If there is a single widget parameter (like for the NOAA weather widget) it returns 3.

Any insight would be appreciated.

Re: chumby
 

See my post #23. It's quite usable and supports all parameters.

Re: chumby
 

Heh, no updates in awhile makes me sad.

(oh man, i wonder if i use digg.....)

Re: chumby
 

I've been exchanging email with the Chumby folks trying to convince them to offer a version of Virtual Chumby with no outer case graphics. I'd say my odds are about 50/50 at the moment... there is some hesitation on their part. And they're very busy, so it takes awhile for them to respond. But I haven't given up yet.

Re: chumby
 

Btw. I have allready written a nicely working chumby emulator using MozEmbeded (on the Desktop). I'll happily share all the code (python).

It basically works like this:
1) wget CHUMBY_CHANNEL_URL (somebody allready posted something like this in this thread).
2) parse the channel XML file
3) show first widget as specified in the channel XML file
4) show second widget, ... show last widget, check if XML was changed
if yes goto 1, else goto 3

Re: chumby
 

is there any cool happenings here yet?
does zerojay still appreciatively hosts files for those without PHP servers?
is it worth it for N800 or gets old fast?

Re: chumby
 

Here's what I got so far messing with googlepages and chumby.

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f3...reenshot_1.jpg

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f3...reenshot_2.jpg

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f3...reenshot_3.jpg

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f3...reenshot_4.jpg

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f3...reenshot_5.jpg

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f3...reenshot_6.jpg

Still working on this.
really cool being able to click on different chumby channels.
It just seems like alot of work, considering I don't know what I'm doing really.

btw, screenies were taken with this cool little QT4 app I got to build for os2008.

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f3...eenshot_10.jpg

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f3...reenshot_8.jpg

Re: chumby
 

If the OS/2 experience learned us anything, it is that the number of emulators a business-grade OS needs is inversely equivalent to its lifetime.

Luckily, it's exactly the opposite with a leasure-grade OS.

Re: chumby
 

Is this code still available somewhere? I'd rather host it up on my server than someone else's. Thanks!

Re: chumby
 

After surprisingly getting gtkmozembed to work on my n800 the other day, I started hacking on a python chumby player for maemo. It's not quite ready yet, but it looks nice and browsing through a hardcoded playlist of chumby movies already works. So here are some teaser screenshots :)

I'll pack it up when I'm happy with the functionality and post a link to this thread. Dependency-wise this will be a bit of a challange, as building a working libgtkmozembed for python currently requires building from the freshes souce package and then installing the python gnome-extras package provided by Owen Williams (who helped me a lot figuring all this out - thanks again, Owen!).

Overall, I think this might be a really cool app. Browsing through the movies with the N800's hardware buttons is really fun and fast.

Re: chumby
 

Sorry .....bump

Re: chumby
 

Can somebody post that php script again?

Thanks!

Re: chumby
 

stoopid question: when I go to http://technut.canada.googlepages.com/chumby.html on my n810, I get a blank screen. Previous poster has virtual chumby there, and it works on my desktop. Why doesn't it work on my n810? Am I missing something? (uh, probably) What?

Thanks!

Re: chumby
 

I was about to ask the same thing

Re: chumby
 

So here is the maemo chumby player I've been working on:

http://www.henso.com/files/grumby/

Install the python2.5-gnome-extras package first (it contains the python gtkmozembed binding), then the grumby package. It requires OS2008 and runs reasonably well on my n800 (with an occasional segfault, probably related to gtkmozembed and flash movies).

Two more screenshots to wet your appetite. Have fun, and let me know how it goes.

Attachment 1046 Attachment 1047

PS: I hope the Chumby guys don't feel threatened by this kind of "parasitic" app. I don't think IT users are so numerous that their servers will be thrashed, and there should be some potential buyers too. So if you like this, please consider buying a real chumby!