Aral Balkan

I'm definitely not a hardware hacker. Pulling apart the innards of a Chumby does not excite me. I don't read Make. But BUG by Bug Labs looks like something I'd love to get my hands on.

CNET sums up the BUG perfectly as "The Lego of Gadgets".

You have a base BUG (called -- surprise, surprise -- BUGbase) that is essentially a tiny ARM-based computer. To this, you plug in hardware modules. The modules plug in like Lego bricks. There's no soldering or messing with wires (i.e., all that stuff that hardware hackers love and I don't get!) Available modules include GPS, Digital Camera/Video, a touch-sensitive color LCD screen (what, no multi-touch? Apple you have truly spoiled me!) There's also an accelerometer and motion sensor module. The BUGbase and available modules are currently on sale for early adopters.

The early-adopter BUGbase differs from the version that will ship later in the year in that it does not have WiFi and its UI features a joystick-based navigation scheme as opposed to a panel-based button system.

You program the BUG using Java and the software stack is completely open source.

How cool would it be to have Flash on this thing? Very, very cool. Can you imagine creating your own device and then creating the UI via Flash? And having it interface with the various modules natively (e.g., camera/video support, GPS/motion sensor/accelerometer access via a socket server, etc.) Now that would truly rock!

Via Mashable.

Comments

• I know ya don't want to mess with wires so these might not be ideal, but worth mentioning. Make Controller - http://www.makingthings.com/products Arduino - http://tinker.it/ukstore/product_info.php?cPath=29&products_id=36 Hopefully we'll have some peeps from Tinker at LFPUG in the coming months and Leif presented on the Make Controller earlier this year.

  by Tink on 2008-01-20 18:17:12

• I hear you about the powercord--in fact, I think this is going to be Chumby's ultimate limitation... I'd say "downfall" but I don't know if that's really the case. Maybe just one killer app would fix Chumby.

  by Phillip Kerman on 2008-01-19 21:19:42

• Looks neat--but I don't think it's really comparable to Chumby. For one, Chumby already has Flash on it. Via the two USB ports you could do much of what that BUG thing looks like will be able to do. The mechanical interface of this does look cool.

  by Phillip Kerman on 2008-01-19 20:17:19

• Hi Philip, One of the important differences for me is that the BUG works on batteries as well as AC. The Chumby doesn't. As long as it's wired, it's really not much more than an alarm clock as far as I'm concerned. To really take off Chumby has to go wireless. And, of course, I love the Lego-style plug-and-play modules. No Flash == major bummer, though!

  by Aral on 2008-01-19 20:38:45

• It's like a more powerful, more polished arduino. Have you seen the Ardunio Lilly Pad? Imagine running a flash interface on your t-shirt! (disclaimer: yes I know the ardunios microprocessor won't run flash) Talking of hardware hacking and flash, I got a usb missile launcher for christmas and built a flash web interface for it, the camera feed streams with windows media so you may not be able to see it, when the next version of VLC is released I'll try creating a live FLV stream! http://missile.glow-internet.com/

  by Thom Shannon on 2008-01-21 14:42:48

• @Thom: Cool stuff! :)

  by Aral on 2008-01-21 18:55:25

• It sounds like fun but no Flash is definitely a downside

  by aYo on 2008-01-21 12:42:46

• Actually, you CAN make the chumby cordless by buying an ER Photo battery and doing some really really basic modding. The end result? ... I wouldn't classify it as a "portable" device that I'm used to dealing with on a daily basis (aka a handset!), but it is untethered. I get somewhere between 6 and 8 hours of life. http://www.scottjanousek.com/blog/2008/01/04/chumby-runs-as-a-portable-device-with-a-simple-battery-mod/

  by Scott Janousek on 2008-02-18 02:06:10

• Hey Scott, Sounds like a nice mod (your site's telling me that the post is password protected so I can't see it). If the Chumby _came_ like that, I'm sure they get far wider acceptance. And something cute as the default screen. Anything, really, to make it seem less like an alarm clock. Violet have the right idea with the Nabaztag (which works beautifully even though it is tethered because it doesn't have a screen).

  by Aral on 2008-02-18 11:12:40