I gave a chumby to one of my nephews and thought I’d report on it.. because it’s kind of an interesting case. He has SMA and so has limited mobility, has some trouble using a keyboard and mouse, etc. So the chumby is a good size that he can hold, he can use the touch screen to press big buttons, and the motion sensing and big buttons on the exterior of the chumby work well for him. He’s had fun with it, and overall it’s a very cool gadget for the price. The sound that comes out of it is surprisingly good, the video quality is good, and it was easy to set up.
A few minor things that weren’t as good as they could be… it had to be plugged into the wall at all times. It’s easy to hack together a battery pack for it though. Not a huge issue unless you aren’t technically up for that kind of thing. The screen gets hot…
I’m hoping to carve out some time in the next couple of months to make some apps for it, but I’m still covered up. We also tried putting a USB stick with pics and MP3s into the USB slot hoping to get it to do what a simple “photo frame” would do - just play the MP3s and show a slideshow of the pics.. but I couldn’t find a way to do it. Maybe there’s an app out there that does that, so I’ll have to dig around and find it… or maybe it was something weird with his USB stick.
Anyway, if you’re a Flash dev then the Chumby is worth tinkering with.
