Hackszine.com: Chumby software development

Chumby software development

MakeFan: wrote in to remind us that those cute little Chumby devices are for sale now. The best thing about the little wireless touchscreen appliance is that they were designed to be open and hackable. The underlying operating system is Linux, and there are a number of lower level OS hacks, but you can also pretty easily whip up slick "widget" applications as well, since the Chumby's normal mode of operation is to play Flash Lite 3 applications.

The Chumby developer wiki has source for a number of sample widget applications that will help you get started if you're new to Flash. If you're a seasoned pro, Flash Lite 3 isn't all that different from developing in standard Flash / AS2. You just need to avoid a few features like bitmap caching, and lay off CPU and graphics intensive code.

If you're interested in developing for the Chumby community, but don't have a device, you can make an account on the chumby.com site. After logging in, you can upload your widgets to a "Virtual Chumby" and see how they would run on the device.

Resources:
Chumby Flash development overview - Link
Chumby Flash development forum - Link
Widget development Wiki - Link

Posted by Jason Striegel | Dec 28, 2007 05:16 PM
Flash, Software Engineering | Permalink | Comments (2)

Comments

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Posted by: Randy on December 29, 2007 at 2:50 PM

I got a chumby for Christmas and I have developed a widget for it. My widget lists the movies you have in your Blockbuster queue. If you would like to try it out search for Blockbuster on www.chumby.com under widgets.

Posted by: Mani on February 5, 2008 at 5:06 AM

Chumby's normal mode of operation is to play Flash ">">http://www.cattechnologies.com/offshoreJAVADevelopment.aspx> Lite 3 applications is useful.