I am always looking for network connected devices that truly add value to our client’s broadband connected homes – after all, that was the basic tenet upon which our company, cyberManor was founded. Of course we all know about the value of our laptop and office computers connected to broadband Internet in the home and we have come to love our Pandora and Rhapsody enabled Sonos whole house audio systems, but what about the Internet appliances we heard so much about at the beginning of this decade? The internet enabled oven, refrigerator, coffee pot and so on? Well, many of those ideas have come and gone – clever ideas that were just not ready for prime time. But in 1998 I read about a new internet appliance device called Chumby (see www.chumby.com) and after purchasing one earlier this year and using it on a daily basis I can strongly endorse it as a must have product for our connected home clients.
So what exactly is a Chumby? The simplest answer is that it is a bedroom alarm clock that never shows the wrong time. The technical answer is that it is a 350MHz ARM processor running Linux with 64MB of SDRAM and 64MB of NAND flash and a 3.5-inch 320x240 resolution touchscreen capable of playing video or displaying photos. But after using it to display photos, news, traffic reports, and even weather I’ve come to the conclusion that I can get all that information once I get out of bed and travel a few yards to my always on, internet enabled computer in the office. What I really needed for my wife and I was a bedroom alarm clock that had the following features:
* A clock that would always give the accurate time and I wouldn’t have to reset each time the power would go down
* One that could easily be set for different wake up times, one for me, one for my wife
* A snooze button that is easy to set and customize
* Wake up music customized to my preferences
* A clock I could easily read from anywhere in the room, yet dimmed at night so I wouldn’t be kept awake by a brightly illuminated clock
And Chumby does all those things easily and elegantly. Setting up multiple alarm times is simply done from an onscreen menu that lets you store customized alarm settings that include the wake-up time, your preferred “snooze” time, and the music that comes on when the alarm sounds. The wake up music can come from your own MP3 music collection or from a wide variety of Internet music streaming sites. Best of all, each of these alarm parameters can be set independently so when my wife sets her alarm she has her own “snooze” and alarm music choices and I have mine. Once the alarm is set at night we select the night mode option and the bright, easy to read clock dims to a level that can be easily seen up close but dark enough to fall asleep without a distracting light.
The Chumby leverages the assets of the digital home we create for our clients. All of our client’s homes have broadband internet access, a router, and multiple wireless access points - Chumby uses the home’s networking infrastructure to accurately set the clock (even after a power failure) and to provide the Internet streaming wake-up music. Even if the Internet goes down in the middle of the night Chumby has a CPU clock that will continue to accurately tell time and wake you up at the time you have set with it’s internal beep alarm. As I mentioned earlier, I could stream my stock quotes and photos (for example) to my Chumby from my office computer if that was a feature that I wanted to implement. But to keep it simple for my wife and I we just use it as an alarm clock - one that is always accurate (thanks to its internet connection) and easily customized and programmed (thanks to its intuitive touchscreen display).
When I reflect back on groundbreaking networking IP based products in the home over the last 8 years that have gained significant traction and use in our client’s home I think of Sonos for whole house music systems, Kaleidescape for whole house digital movie distribution and now I’ll go out on a limb and say that Chumby will redefine our expectations for the master bedroom alarm clock radio. At $180 it is not an inexpensive alarm clock but for our clients that have spent over six figures for our customized integrated electronic solutions for their home it’s a nice gift we can give them that they will use every day, sits a foot or two away from where they sleep, and remind them of our company’s services each time they use it. In my opinion, that’s an investment worth making.
(reprinted from Residential Systems Magazine)
No comments:
Post a Comment