Gotta love the team over at iFixit, as soon as a new piece of tech comes out they promptly tear it apart — in the interest of science, naturally. Be warned though, taking apart your Chumby will void its warranty.
I previewed the new Chumby One last month. It’s a widget-based Internet appliance with a 3.5-inch, 320 x 240 touchscreen that rotates between various applications that display audio, video, games, utilities and news. It’s a great little device that fits perfectly on a nightstand, kitchen counter or desk.
iFixIt calls the Chumby One a nicely designed and executed product noting that it’s quite easy to take apart.
Notable components found inside the Chumby One during teardown:
- Freescale i.MX233 CPU, running at 454 MHz
- MMA7455 3-axis accelerometer
- Hynix 923E 64MB DDR DRAM
- QN8005B FM Radio chip
- An inscription that reads “with love, bunnie”
Other highlights:
- The MicroSD socket contains a 2GB Kingston MicroSD firmware card, which can easily be pulled out once the device is opened. Users can load custom firmware and upgrade Chumby one’s storage in a snap.
- There are plenty of ventilation holes in the top and rear outer cases. Such a Swiss cheese case design allows the chumby to stay cool without the need for a fan.
- Volume control commands are sent via a rotary encoder that translates angular degrees of rotation into binary code recognized by the board.
- The wireless card is attached to a small interconnect board, converting the four-pin connector found on the logic board into the USB connector used by the wireless card. This could potentially mean hacking/upgrading the Chumby to 802.11n in the future, were you able to find a USB Wi-Fi card of similar size.
- You can also unplug the USB Wi-Fi card and plug in regular Ethernet using a USB-to-Ethernet dongle.
- The 2W mono speaker is mounted onto a resonance box which occupies precious interior space, which could be used to stuff more awesome hacking stuff into the Chumby.
All of iFixIt’s teardowns and repair guides are now CC licensed, meaning that you’re free to reproduce, modify, and redistribute them — including photos, text, and PDFs.
