Chumby iRemote

Posted June 16th by jaycrossler in Code, iPhone

For my birthday this year, a bunch of my coworkers bought me a Chumby! These cool little devices are a cross between an iPod Touch and a Beanbag. They are completely open source (hardware and software), and are very hackable.

Here are a few resource that many people use:

One of the coolest widgets that are available is ChumbyLand, which is a host for other games and items. I’ve found this works best when you have a separate channel (mine is named “Chumbyland”, in addition to one for me and one for my wife). What I’ve found is that even though the chumby is cool, sometimes it’s easier to access it from a distance (when it’s on a counter or plugged into speakers).

So, I build a quick Chumby min-web server that’s optimized for viewing on an iPhone or iPod touch.There are three .cgi files zipped up here. There are a few ways to get them onto your chumby. What I’ve found works the best is to use SCP (which is a single-file tool to Securely Copy to a linux machine). To get these to work, there are a few steps:

Unzip the file into a local directory. There are three .cgi files
Click the secret Pi logo (go into chumby settings, about chumby, then click the Pi in the top right) and turn on the SSHD (Secure Shell Daemon) and remember the IP address.
SCP the files over to your chumby (you can use WinSCP on windows), or use this from the Mac terminal line. Replace these with the IP address of your chumby:
SSH into your chumby, and cd /psp/cgi-bin/ and run ‘chmod a+x *.cgi’ – this tells the chumby server that it’s ok to eXecute these files
On your iPhone/iTouch/Laptop that’s connected on the local network, navigate to http://ip.ip.ip.ip/cgi-big/custom/index.cgi
On an iPhone, you can click “+” to add this to the home screen as a bookmark for best viewing
You probably want to edit the event.cgi to put in the name of the channels for channel 1 and 2

Here is the SCP command to use if you’re using a mac:

scp event.cgi root@192.168.2.193:/psp/cgi-bin | scp index.cgi root@192.168.2.193:/psp/cgi-bin | scp control.cgi root@192.168.2.193:/psp/cgi-bin

It’s not very advanced, but works well for me (and was one day of work). I’ll be refining this, and possibly make a version that runs on Rails or PHP, as people have found how to hack the Chumby to put both of these web servers on it. The forums indicate there might be much more advanced radio control in the next Chumby firmware version. I’d love if you had any suggestions for how to improve it!

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5 comments to... “Chumby iRemote”

andom
June 19th, 2009

Thanks for this great app, I like it a lot!
Oh, by the way, cgi files must be made executable to make it work.

Jay Crossler
June 19th, 2009

Great point, I’ll edit the text to indicate you need to ssh in ad run ‘chmod a+x *.cgi’ on the files in that directory. Glad you like it, let me know if you want any other features!

Remco
July 13th, 2009

Woow !

Super idea, I like it very much…

Are there already any updates?

Thanks

We Create Games » Blog Archive » Chumby Advanced Tricks
January 29th, 2010

[...] (built on previous Chumby iRemote post here) [...]

Matt
March 6th, 2010

I just have a small problem with the Chumbymote. I am not using it as an iPod remote, rather I am entering the url from IE8 from my WinXp Sp3. The problem I am having is this; each button only works once. I can skip the widget once. Change the channel once. Raise the volume once…and so on. I think the script my need to be run as a loop (like a “goto” command in basic). I have not programed since high school and it was Basic and QBasic. Please help me troubleshoot. (Also, is there a good resource for self-teaching Perl/CGI Scripts? Just wondering…)