mChumby – Test run

After getting my EasySync USB-Can Adapter it was time to resurrect the mChumby project.  The interface GUI design hasn’t changed much, namely because its been lying idle but I figured it is good enough to try putting it onto the car for a test run.

I didn’t want to fiddle around with getting power to the Chumby, so the test is simply using my trusty old laptop and the EasySync adapter.  Only the speedometer, the tachometer and the accelerator pedal position is attached because again I’m too lazy to fiddle with my cable layout and as such its connected to the Mazda HS-Can bus only rather than the MS-Can where the goodie trip computer information is contained.

Almost every concoction of technology is used ranging from CAN, USB, PHP, HTTP, Shared Memory, XML, Flash, to an obscure programming language called HaXe.  Here is the result :-

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MChumby – Interface Design

Working a 70 hour week dampened my enthusiasm for the MChumby but I managed to scrape a couple of hours today to try my hand with HaXe + Flash to prototype the Chumby Interface.

Test of revised layout
Test of revised layout

A few interesting tidbits were learned from the experiments :-

  1. HaXe + Geany are great for developing flash widgets for the Chumby
  2. Gnash doesn’t render the same as Linux Adobe Flash
  3. Chumby renders the same as Adobe Flash
  4. Text vertical alignment in flash is crap

A bit of background and a demo video of the widget on the Chumby after the break.

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