Chumby’s own servers went dark in February 2013, and every widget that depended on them stopped, which left most Chumbys as an expensive clock. Someone going by Zurk built a full offline firmware that replaces the widget channel with one the device serves to itself, so nothing outside your house is involved anymore.
Installing it uses the same USB update mechanism Chumby always shipped with, so there’s no soldering or opening the case.
What to do
- Read the project README and download the firmware files.
- Copy them onto a FAT32 USB stick, root folder, keeping the folder structure intact.
- Plug the stick into a powered-on, networked Chumby and leave it alone for three to five minutes while it installs and talks you through it.
- Pull the stick once it’s done and let the Chumby reboot on its own.
After that it manages its own widgets, music and slideshow from a web server running on the device itself, so there’s nothing left outside your house to keep alive.