Chumby Industries shuts down

http://www.theverge.com/2012/4/20/2963003/chumby-broken-up-employees-at-technicolor-technology-sold

by joe_bleau • 14 years ago

42 19 14 years ago

ekianjo• 14 years ago

Can't say this is unexpected... I haven't used my chumby for months, but does it mean the chumby channels are going to shut down as well after this summer, leaving everyone with a useless box that cannot do anything ?

chaostheory• 14 years ago

Yeah this is what I fear as well. I didn't know everything including the interface depended on a server. A little annoying once you figure it out after paying for one.

astrodust• 14 years ago

Maybe I'm cynical but this reads as an innovator becomes a zombie, a patent portfolio that's worth billions in potential lawsuits, or perhaps more fuel for the arms race.

Urgo• 14 years ago

Aw sad day. I had one of the original Chumby's right after they went on sale. Haven't used it in year since the wifi became so flakey but it was nice at the time.

nabilt3• 14 years ago

I'm interested to know what HN thinks this means for hardware startups. Is this a case of Chumby not executing well enough or is it too hard to build a hardware startup? I think it's the former, but many people out there including investors seem to think otherwise. Some even go as far to say it is not worth doing a hardware startup because software scales soo much easier.

rollypolly• 14 years ago

Hardware startups can be very risky..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CueCat

paulrademacher• 14 years ago

Very risky, but not all failures.

Square, FitBit, MakerBot, Nest, Tesla

praptak• 14 years ago

C'mon, bad example. CueCat was dead at birth: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000037.html

i386• 14 years ago

Like a lot of failed companies, they built a product the market had no need for. I don't think this reflects at all on hardware startups - just poor investment.

pmjordan2• 14 years ago

It's hard to say from the outside whether the hardware was what killed them. Increasingly, hardware lives and dies by the software that comes with it. If they were building it today, they'd probably be basing it on Android or bits of WebOS or something and "standing on the shoulders of giants," to overuse that phrase some more. (i.e. reduce the effort going into the software stack) And the ARM chips and mobile browsers of today are quite a bit better, too. So maybe they were just ahead of their time. Or maybe they just didn't see the iPhone and iPad coming.

aresant• 14 years ago

$17.5m raised and lost for a leather-coated-open-source-widget-powered-alarm-clock in their early days, to a smart-TV platform in their later days.

Sad story of a multi-pivot failed, hope somebody there takes the time to write the posthumous, I'd read it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chumby

georgemcbay• 14 years ago

I'm pretty surprised this is just getting out now. The company essentially ceased to exist as anything but a legal entity back in December of last year.

However, most of the team is still working together at a new company as mentioned in the linked article on theverge. And most of us still even sit at the same exact desks we sat at while working for chumby.

tectonic• 14 years ago

I had a chumby. His name was Grumpy. I sold him. Got out in the nick of time.

polycom• 14 years ago

I still use my Chumby as an alarm clock, and it works really well. I hope that it will be possible to keep it running without the chumby servers through some hacks.

Really sad to see that it didn't work out.

rektide• 14 years ago

Chumby is gone. But it's lead engineer Bunnie has a new company, BunnieStudios. http://www.bunniestudios.com/

BunnieStudios makes the netv device: it's an HDMI pass-through injector, and it's interface is all web based.

nabilt3• 14 years ago

The NeTV is a fascinating device. Until now it wasn't possible to manipulate video protected by HDCP unless you got an expensive license. Probably not doable for hobbyists and startups. Bunnie solved this by performing a man-in-the-middle attack to inject video in the stream. Since he is not decrypting anything he is not breaking the DMCA. Brilliant! The development platform is also really nice. They have a virtual machine with the toolchain setup so you can start developing immediately and push firmware to your device through the net.

Bunnie gives more details here: http://youtu.be/37SBMyGoCAU

Hopefully, he will have more success outside the consumer market.

Chumby Industries shuts down

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