Zurk’s Firmware – Time-sinks

 

Introduction

There are many time-sinks in the Zurk’s firmware for the Chumby. What I mean by this is there are many things that can waste your time because they appear to be works in progress or abandoned ideas that were never completed. In the industry this is called dead code and is harmless but can waste someone’s time particularly if there is documentation present which refers to these items which leads users down the path of making changes and wondering why things are not working as documented. I am going to document a few that I found so hopefully others will not waste their time.

If you believe that the items I have identified as time sinks are not and are actually useful then please comment but please fully explain why it is useful and provide solid references or steps to make them useful. My biggest pet peeve is having people point others to vague references or incompletely documenting steps. However being a developer I know that writing documentation is one of the least favorite things that we must do and I would rather skip it as well but remember that you can have the greatest idea or the best product but if you cannot communicate to others why your idea is the greatest so that they can understand it then it is totally worthless and will help no one.

When I find something that I feel has value but is poorly documented, I attempt to produce documentation which will allow others to use it and modify it if necessary so they can receive some benefit from it.

Zurk has done an excellent job with creating firmware that allows our Chumby devices to continue to be useful even though Chumby Industries Severs function no more. I do appreciate Duane for maintaining a server to allow the Space Clock widget to run on our Chumbies. It has allowed me to wait until now to actually install the off-line firmware. I was hoping that the server(s) would be brought back to life but I must face reality and move on but I do not want to give up on my Chumby just yet. I really like these devices and intend to use them until they die or longer.

Time-sinks

1. Weather Data Editor
   The README.TXT file that comes with Zurk’s firmware mentions that you should edit the Weather information for your location using the Multi Channel Widget Editor or Weather Editor.
   
   You should edit the widgets and forget the Weather Editor, which is the Weather Data Editor link on the web interface. The Weather Data Editor edits the /mnt/storage/zurk/psp.c1/zwapi.sh script but it appears that the script is never run. It also appears that if/when it does run, you need to include several image widgets to point to the image files created to make this useful.
   
   Please not that my Chumby has been running for several hours and the images have not been written to /mnt/storage/zurk/tmp, which is why I believe the script does not run.
   
2. Adding a Widget
   I will go into a few things here about adding a widget. First there is some documentation discussing adding widgets but it is outdated and confusing. I see no way in the world that someone without some technical background can add a widget successfully. It does appear that Zurk may be on the path to make it easy but still has some work to do. Unfortunately I found that the widgets that are located at /mnt/storage/zurk/www are currently useless and may be part of a future project to make adding widgets easy. I spent some time in this directory thinking that widgets needed to be in this directory to be able to be added in the web interface. No matter how I tried adding a new widget through the “Add New Widget” button, it would create a generic widget. (It does state that in the description before the textbox.)
   
   
   I then tried several different ways to add a widget but was finally able to figure it out. I will outline the steps in a future post.

I am certain that there are other time-sink that I will come across so I plan to update this post when I find them.

Conclusion

There are many ways to waste time poking around Zurk’s firmware. I will try to save you some time by providing detailed guides on how to get your Chumby up and running the way you want with out wasting too much of your time.

Please post constructive and informative feedback to let other know about things that you have come across.

BTW: Here is an example of a totally useless response I found relating to adding widgets. The reason that I find it totally useless was the individual writing the response assumed that the poster did not see the button, which I doubt, and they assumed that the button actually performed a useful function. I assume that the individual who wrote the response had not actually used the button to add a widget. If they did then they should have followed up with a detailed explanation on how to use it to add a new widget. I will be writing detailed instructions on how to use the button and add a new widget.

REF: http://forum.chumby.com/viewtopic.php?id=8836

---

1. yes you didnt know how to add new widgets. the gigantic add new widget button on the web control panel must have missed you, being that its right front and center and you just have to click it.

---

REMINDER: This post is referencing Zurk’s firmware version 29.0. This post may or may not apply to different versions. All comments should deal with version 29.0 only.