tomputer

It’s taken me a while I’ll admit but I’ve just got around to releasing the sourcecode for the XBMChumby widget I wrote which displays the XBMC “Now Playing” queue on the Chumby. I decided early on that my very basic skills as a flash/ActionScript developer weren’t up to developing this to it’s full potential so now if anyone is interested in taking it further please checkout the code and get in touch if you have any problems building it etc etc etc.

The sourceforge project page is: https://sourceforge.net/projects/xbmchumby/

…or you can point your CVS client at xbmchumby.cvs.sourceforge.net

Intro
I’ve created a Chumby widget to act as a basic remote display for XBMC. I’ve been using it and reworking it over the last couple of weeks and I think it’s now in a state where I can make it available for others to try. It works by retreiving an RSS feed from the Xbox that contains a list of the next 5 tracks in the music playlist. If no music is playing, the RSS feed will be empty. To achieve this I’ve written a simple web page that sits on the Xbox and uses the XBMC API to retreive information about the current playlist. The widget also uses XBMC’s http API to provide basic controls to play, pause and skip tracks. This is my first attempt at using ActionScript so the functionality is fairly basic, but if others find it useful I may add more features, or release the sourcecode.

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I’ve been monitoring the Chumby project since I first saw the device on an episode of Diggnation over a year ago… Kevin had been given one of the alpha prototypes at FooCamp and gave a quick description. I’ve been waiting since then for the device to get a public release – I guess that shows the power of product placement even though I’m sure no cash had changed hands for it to appear on the show. People who know me or have read my thoughts on this before will know that I think there’s a lot of potential for an “ambient” device that provides up-to-date information from the online world without the user having to be sat in front of a PC. I was disappointed with the Nabaztag because of limitations with the user interface, but eager to get my hands on a Chumby as it seemed far more advanced. The Chumby was originally pitched as a new take on clock-radio for the internet enabled 21st century but I think that description groslly undersells it (and at $179, it’s an epensive way to wake up in the morning).

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I got a Nabaztag last week. It’s an wifi enabled ambient device for the home that can provide information in the form of audio, speech, or coloured lights for news updates and alerts that it downloads from the internet. I think the concept is great: a device that keeps me up-to-date with weather, traffic, email or twitter without me having to boot up my computer. The technology is quite sophisticated: the initial setup is done by holding a button for 5seconds to turn the device into a wireless access point, then connect to the access point from a computer and browse to its config pages (it doesn’t have an ethernet port). From here you configure the network settings for your wireless network and then restart it and it connects to your network and the lights glow green to indicate that it has got an internet connection. All configuration is then done from the my.nabaztag.com website.

After playing around with my Nabaztag over the weekend my initial impressions are that it has a few flaws:
- The form factor. It’s supposed to look like a rabbit, which makes it look like a kids toy and not something you want to sit on the coffee table in your living room.
-The interface. The main way that the device communicates its updates is through either text-to-speech or mp3 clips. It has some lights on the front that can be configured to glow different colours to indicate different statuses, but this is quite limited. This means that every update interrupts whatever you happen to be doing at the time. I want it to be a device that sits in the corner of the room so that I can glance at it to get very high level updates and then pick it up and interact with it to get more detail. Ambient. I don’t want it to interrupt the meal I’m eating or the film I’m watching or the conversation I’m having.

Well, so far, so bad but I haven’t got to the best part: it has an API so it’s hackable! It has a very simple REST-like API that lets you send it to sleep, wake it up, change the light colour, send it some text for it read aloud or move the position of the ears (yes, really!). This certainly makes it a more useful device for me and I applaud the manufacturers, Violet, for making the device so open. I’ve started to play around with a Netvibves UWA widget for it which I’ll post here when it does something useful (there are already several 3rd party widgets available).

I’m still undecided whether this will be a useful device for me or whether it will be heading for eBay. I’m still really keen on the Chumby (or will be, when they start shipping to the UK) which I don’t expect to suffer from some of the flaws of the Nabaztag that I’ve described here. If I can take it out of its rabbit body and put it in something a bit more attractive and use the API to create something that I’ll use regularly then it could be a winner.