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Handhelds Hardware

Review of the Cybiko Xtreme 87

Posted by michael from the alternative-class-experiences dept.
Levendis23 writes: "We've just posted our latest review: the Cybiko Xtreme. Pretty slick little gadget, with RF networking and ability to set up bluetooth-like clouds so that other units can talk to each other, play games, or swap files. You can can even use another unit at as a repeater to bounce your message to another unit out of your range."
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Review of the Cybiko Xtreme More

Review of the Cybiko Xtreme

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  • Wave of the future? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 27, 2001 @09:18AM (#2618623)
    Just a couple days ago my father related to me how he was telling his students about Fidonet - sending a message across country by having it hop modem'd servers in the good ol' days - and the kids saying "Why not just use the internet?"

    So having these little babies spread across a country could easily lead to a "Cybiko across America", eh? An alternative to the U.S. gov't filtering all our packets? Hmmm...
    • Although it would take a week or better to make it. Their little SMS service doesn't have routing capabilities, so the message would bounce around with all the other lost messages.

      And somebody has to say it, so "Imagine a Beowulf Cluster of these...."
    • _Your_father_ had to tell you about fidonet?!? Good god man, how old are you? I consider myself a fairly young professional at the ripe old age of 22 here, and I used fidonet for years back when BBS's were all the rage...

      Maybe I'm becoming one of those old fart geeks.
      "Man, _I_ remember when I got my first 286 OCed to 12.5MHz!! It had a 40mB HDD too! It was svveet!!!" ;)
      • Maybe I'm becoming one of those old fart geeks.

        Sorry, Sonny...I'm a true old fart geek...
        I used to "BBS Surf" on my Atari 800, with 48K of RAM, a 188K Floppy drive and a 300 Baud modem..

        My modem at work was 75 Baud...

        Smokin'!!!
        • An Atari 800? We had to make do with a network of cans and strings. And we *liked* it!

          -Legion

        • Sorry, Sonny...I'm a true old fart geek...

          No you aren't. I started my computer experience on a PDP-8 with terminal and accoustically coupled modem. I think you measured the modem speed in seconds per character. A few years later, I graduated to a PDP-11. My first "home" computer was a TI-99/4A with only 16K of RAM, NO floppy drive and NO modem. It used cassette tape for storage. Note that there were many home computers that came out prior that I passed on.

          But even I don't qualify for the true old fart geek. I missed punch cards in college by one year. Learning Fortran on punch card machines would have rounded out my nostalgia-geek experience.

          • Learning Fortran on punch card machines would have rounded out my nostalgia-geek experience.


            Nah. You haven't been a true old-fart geek unless you've toggled in a bootstrap loader to read a paper tape from a ASR-33 teletype.

            • Ah, well, if you want to go back that far...

              When I was in the USAF, I DID toggle in diagnostics and loaders on the front panel of my HM-4118...
              Built by Hughes Aircraft Corp...
              128k of ferrite core memory. Input devices included 4 9-track tape drives, a paper-tape reader and a Teletype 321 terminal...
              And output devices were 14 radar consoles and a paper tape punch...

              So, YES, I am an old fart, just not an old UNIX fart... :)
        • Dude, you had a floppy drive? I am so jealous. I'm still using this cassette jobber.

  • The Specs (Score:2, Redundant)

    by The Gardener ( 519078 )

    Since the article is long on hype and thin on substance, here are some details:
    2 NiMH Rechargeable Batteries - Not Removable
    Power Adapter
    USB
    Installation CD

    I don't have the hardware specs on the new "Xtreme", but here is the previous model:

    CYBIKO COMPUTER MODEL CY6411.

    Hardware specifications
    Main Processor: 32 bit, 11 MHz Hitachi H8S/2246
    Coprocessor: Atmel AT90S2313, 4 MHz
    RAM: 512 KB
    Flash disk: 512 KB, extendible up to 1 MB
    LCD display: 160x100 dots, 59x40 mm, 4 level grayscale
    RF transceiver: RF2915
    Expansion cartridge slot: 68-pin
    PC connection socket: RS232 serial port
    Size: 5.7" x 2.8" x 0.86"
    Weight: 4.3 oz
    Software specifications
    Operating System: CyOS v.1.2
    Software: CyOS v.1.2 compatible apps
    Communication Protocol: CyDP x.30 (Cybiko RF Digital Protocol)
    Dynamic Wireless Local Network: automatically provided by CyOS v.1.2 and CyDP x.30
    RF communication features
    Frequency: 902-928 MHz
    Number of channels: 30 digital channels
    Communication Rate: 19200 bps each channel
    Transmission and Receiving Range: 150 ft. indoors, 300 ft. outdoors (environment dependent)
    Max. online Cybiko units: 3000 (100 units on each of 30 channels)

    The Gardener

    • Uh... (Score:3, Informative)

      by Psarchasm ( 6377 )
      Specs are on the web site...

      http://www.cybikoxtreme.com/support/specs.asp

    • Re:The Specs (Score:2, Insightful)

      by zeno_2 ( 518291 )
      I was somewhat disappointed with the article, it has no mention on what the device can actually do. Sure, the buttons here and there are great, yada yada, but what happens when you turn it on?

      From what it sounds like, you can send and recieve text messages between devices, maybe play games, *maybe* send and recieve mp3 files from your friends if you both have that expansion card. Am i missing something? I guess I can say that in the town I live in, I really doubt anyone would have one of these, and those willing would probably rather have one of those motorola 2 way radios, much longer range, and if you just needed to 'talk' to someone else, that would do the trick.

      Ah well, maybe it does some other stuff im not aware of.

  • original cybiko (Score:5, Informative)

    by mliu ( 85608 ) on Tuesday November 27, 2001 @09:42AM (#2618691) Homepage
    I had one of the original "classic" cybiko's. Why did I have it? Because they gave them away by the boatload in a contest on their website where everyone who signed up won one pretty much. A lot of people who got them took them right back to Best Buy/CompUSA/Staples/Toys R US etc. and got themself a $100 return credit. I wonder how many of these give-aways they're including in the "half a million" they claim they sold.

    That aside, it was really a pretty neat toy for any one in school still. It was no PDA, but it wasn't meant to be one either. They eliminated features that you can live without in a device targeted towards school kids (touch screen, high res screen, size, etc.) and they added some really nice features (wireless networking which could chat, play games, check email, etc). It would supposedly automatically network with nearby Cybiko's so you could chat, and play games with them, and if one of them was plugged into a computer, you could use that one to access the internet to check email and stuff, though I dunno how well these things actually worked as I never met anyone with one besides me.

    I was a little surprised these things didn't catch on more. I'm guessing that's why they gave so many away, because this seems like the sorta thing with a critical mass. On its own, it sucks (not much fun to chat with yourself), but the more people who have it, the better it becomes. Add in the school mentality of the more people who have it, the cooler it becomes as well, and I thought this thing had a lot of potential if they could have gotten the spark started.

    But in their giveaway they screwed up big time by not including an age limit at that time, so the wrong people ended up with these things, and those people took them back to the stores, thus taking away even more sales for them! I'm surprised to see that these guys are still around, I was sure at the time after that mistake, and giving away 1000's of these things that surely they would be just another .com/tech company down the tubes. Their new one seems pretty nice though, the size was one of the kickers with the original, maybe they'll make it this time.

    Though this also seems like exactly the sort of thing where just as it starts to get popular, school administrators will start banning it, so I don't think they're out of the woods yet......
    • How did so many people return these things without a receipt?
      • Notice that the original poster said that they returned them for $100 store credit.

        Almost any retailer will take back a product they sell in unopened condition without a receipt for store credit, and for us geeks, $100 store credit at Best Buy or Circuit City is as good as cash... :-)
    • I was a little surprised these things didn't catch on more

      They *did* catch on in a big way, but the target market is about 4th through 9th grade. 500,000 units in a year is impressive.
    • > I'm surprised to see that these guys are still
      > around, I was sure at the time after that
      > mistake, and giving away 1000's of these things
      > that surely they would be just
      > another .com/tech company down the tubes.

      It still might happen. We hired quite a few of former Cybiko developers and designers over the last few months. Looks like they are having a massive layoff.

  • PDA... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by don_carnage ( 145494 )
    I can't wait for the day when this sort of technology (the ability to communicate with/through other units) comes to the PDA. Palm Pilots and Visors are on just about every desk here at the office and the ability to schedule meetings, send messages and (play games) over wireless would be very useful and widely used.

    • Re:PDA... (Score:3, Informative)

      by Cato ( 8296 )
      Quite a lot of mobile phones have these features already, at least in Europe - SMS (short message service, aka text messaging) is on every phone, and many phones have two-player games over infrared and calendars. The latest phones, e.g. Ericsson T68, have colour, Bluetooth for syncing and games, and can sync over the GPRS packet network as well.
      • SMS still goes via the masts. What would be übercool would be if the phones could route messages among each other. But that will never happen, as that would ruin the teleco:s buisinesses...

        • Re:PDA... (Score:2)

          by Gleef ( 86 )
          Nextel [nextel.com] phones have a Direct Connect [nextel.com] feature that bypasses the Cell masts.
          • Ummm. Not really, from my experience. We had those at a previous job, and the direct connect still had to go through the cell towers.

            I could direct-connect to my boss in .ca.us when I was on vacation in .ut.us. They also track how many conversations you have.

  • Cybiko == AOL (Score:4, Interesting)

    by mshiltonj ( 220311 ) <mshiltonjNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Tuesday November 27, 2001 @10:00AM (#2618728) Homepage Journal
    Don't forget, AOL is directing [cnet.com] the development of the Cybiko. The Cybiko will be AOL's Palm Pilot.

    Look away from the light.

    • Investment != Control (Score:3, Informative)

      by fm6 ( 162816 )
      Before you jump to any conclusions as to who "controls" Cybiko, find out all the investors, who owns what percent, and what shares have voting rights.
  • Said you can now get a MP3 player with purchase of a cybiko extreme. It plugs into the expansion slot. It also adds the SD/MMC slot and can take cards of any size. Not a bad idea to get sales going! The more Cybiko's the better.
  • With these PDA-alikes becoming more and more powerful, I wonder if these couldn't be used as a weapon for cyberterrorism/espionage.
    Let's see you have a small, decent computer. Networking capabilities. Easily hidden and, hey, would anyone expect an assault from these things ?
    The keyboard comes in handy for mission critical scripting etc.
    Just go into desired building, h4x0r their nets (or aquire confidential data - when you are working for govermental bodies) and leave.
    And you'll get away because noone will notice that YOU did anything. Might work with laptops, too, but laptops are more difficult to hide and may raise suspicion.
    • Damn, now that you're onto us, we'll have to start encrypting those major business networks that run on Cybiko power! The world is no longer a safe place! Hackers now have small devices capable of sending wireless signals....
  • A quick perusal of their website doesn't reveal any thing that would allow someone do their own coding. Toys like this are only worth having if they are hackable :). Anyone know of any projects to hack them or provide dev. tools. Heck does any SELL dev tools for the sucker?

    • Re:How hackable are these suckers? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Junks Jerzey ( 54586 ) on Tuesday November 27, 2001 @10:56AM (#2618920)
      A quick perusal of their website doesn't reveal any thing that would allow someone do their own coding. Toys like this are only worth having if they are hackable :). Anyone know of any projects to hack them or provide dev. tools.

      You can get the development tools and documentation from the Cybiko web site. They've been available for free right from the start.

      • Re:How hackable are these suckers? (Score:1, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        I'm thinking these would make either a good portable point-of-sale device, or inventory device. Just add on a USB barcode scanner and you are all set to sell products -- wirelessly!
      • Peruse http://www.devrs.com/cybiko/

        My guess is this is mostly for the original Cybiko, but I would suspect that much of the information will apply to the new Cybiko.
    • Boy, you sure didn't look very hard. There's a real easy to find "Developers" section [cybiko.com] that has all you need, and need to know, to write software for the Cybikos. That's been the great hallmark of the Cybikos from the beginning: a fairly open SDK.

      There are limits to what you can do with the free SDK (they don't allow you to sell applets made with the free one), but it works, and it's real easy to create stuff for the Cyb.

      I keep thinking to myself: frotz port.. frotz port.. frotz port..

  • Anybody else thinking...graphing calulcator?

    Look at the shape of it. And where the buttons are placed, and the screen itself.
    • I have a "Cybiko Classic." To put it frankly, the graphing calc program for it really sucks.
      Unless:
      a) They re-made it (doesn't look like it)
      or
      b) You want to code your own

      ...you're pretty much out of luck

  • Links (Score:4, Informative)

    by doofsmack ( 537722 ) on Tuesday November 27, 2001 @11:13AM (#2618997)
    I used to be active in the cybiko community. Here are some links:
    www.cybla.com
    www.cybimunk.com
    www.devcybiko.com

    Hope you find these useful
  • I'm a bit skeptical about this. I had the VTech "phones" expecting to talk with all sorts of people and exchanging voice mail with other people, but upon buying 2 of them, I quickly realized they had almost NO range whatsoever. Boy did I feel ripped off.
  • And the best thing about the new cybiko is that the market for the old ones have dropped like a rock. I've had one of the old ones for awhile now, and they are fairly nifty(you can get a C devkit and write you own tools). You can only get the MP3 player for the old one second hand but it is pretty good.($20 cybiko, $40 mp3, $40 memory upgrade=$100 mp3player+wireless). Now that they are going for so cheap, I think I'll finally buy a few extras so I can set up a WAP gateway for mine.

    Although, the new one's look like they are barely worth it, if the keypad is truly better... The #1 crappy thing about the old cybiko was the POS 1 piece rubber keypad.

    Oh, and if anyone actually paid the quoted price of $150, they were suckers. They had a 2 for $100 deal for quite awhile, when you could sell the second on ebay for $60-80
  • These things work right smack in the middle of the 902-928 MHz Ham radio band (it's a shared allocation). There are a number of ham radio folks looking at boosting the power and modifying the antenna system (legal to do only if you have a Tech or higher ham license). It shouldn't be too difficult to pump the power up to the point where the usable range is something on the order of a mile or so. Then, things ought to start getting interesting.
    • Wow, this would be pretty awsome. Would it be for the new units or the old? I go to a university and my house is within a mile of everything on campus and our college community. I also have a broadband connection. Does this mean that if I was able to set one up at my house I could get email anywhere in the area? Unlimited wireless email access for a one time fee of $60 (2 cybiko classics). Now that would be cool.
      • Probably couldn't use the ham license for this app, since there are commercial and content restrictions on ham radio. I'd recommend getting some kind of ethernet wireless bridge and directional antennas.

  • Important things not covered.. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Lumpy ( 12016 ) on Tuesday November 27, 2001 @02:20PM (#2620109) Homepage
    Are these "compatable" with the older cybiko?
    Specifically in wireless connectivity and data sharing.

    That is a very important issue.
  • I bought a couple of Cybikos a year ago. I felt that they were actually pretty good value for the money but I could see where there were some shortfalls and I predicted that it wouldn't be long before they released a new version with some of the better features. Cybiko denied they had anything planned and a lot of people said it wouldn't happen but *smug*.

    Seriously though, these are cool devices. The SDK is open and free although documentation was a little lacking last time I checked. There is a whole host of games and apps for them (as with the palm) and a thriving developer community. Also, one of the coolest things is that if you have two of these things, you can use one as a tunnel, connect to your PC and have wireless internet on the other one.

    I was planning on writing some apps for mine but unfortunately, events overtook me this year. Now they have this new one out, I shall have to have another look (I hope the Xtreme has a serial port like the classic)

    Rich
  • The article repeatedly states that the cybiko came out a year ago. I remember two years ago when I saw someone playing on one though.
  • One, what's inside it? I dind't see processor or memeory specs on that site..

    Two, I tried to look for that info on
    cybico's us website [cybiko.com]
    and guess what? It gave me this error.

    Sorry, to access to the page you need to enable "cookies" in your browser settings.
    A "cookies" is a small amount of information that a web site copies to your computer.

    If you use Internet Explorer 5.0, you have to do the following to enable "cookies":
    Press 'Tools' on the top bar of Internet Explorer. Then press 'Internet Options' -> 'Security' and set medium or lower level of security. You can also press 'Custom' button in 'Security' options and set 'Allow per session cookies (not stored)' in 'Enable'.

    If you use Internet Explorer 6.0, you have to do the following to enable "cookies":
    Press 'Tools' on the top bar of Internet Explorer. Then press 'Internet Options' -> 'Security' and set medium or lower level of security. You can also press 'Advanced' button in 'Privacy' options and uncheck 'Override automatic cookie handling' box.
    If you want to be notified when Internet Explorer accepts a cookie, check 'Override automatic cookie handling' and set 'First-party Cookies' & 'Third-party Cookies' in 'Prompt'.

    If you use AOL 5.0:
    On the 'My AOL' menu, click 'Preferences'. On the 'Preferences' window, click 'WWW', then press 'Security' tab. Set medium (or lower) level of security (or press 'Custom' button and set 'Allow per session cookies (not stored)' in 'Enable'). Click 'Ok'. If that does not work, please update to AOL 6.0.

    If you use Netscape Navigator 4.7 or higher:
    From the Edit menu, choose Preferences. Click the Advanced category. Click one of the radio buttons. If you want to be notified when Communicator accepts a cookie, check "Warn me before accepting a cookie."

    Home © 1999-2001. Cybiko, Inc. All rights reserved.

    can you belive the nerve of them? Not to mention their incredibly bad coding standards to make a site that can't handle these things graciously!
    Bastards.
    • Not only that, but whenever you connect it to your PC to load stuff on it, the software sends your personal information to the Cybiko site. It also apparently collects information on Cybikos it communicates with and sends THAT as well.
    • Look harder. The specs are right on the website.

      CYBIKO XTREMETM MODEL CY44801.

      Hardware specifications
      Main Processor Hitachi H8S/2323 18MHz
      Coprocessor Atmel AT90S2313 4MHz
      Memory:
      Parallel read-only flash 512Kb
      Disk (electronic RAM-Disk) 500Kb
      RAM 1.5Mb
      LCD Grayscale screen 160x100 pixels, 54x35 mm
      RF transceiver RF2915
      Expansion cartridge slot 24-pin proprietary
      PC/charging unit connection socket USB
      Size 81 mm x 141mm x 19mm (3.2" x 5.6" x 0.8")
      Weight 150 g (0.33 lbs.)
      Software specifications
      Operating System CyOSTM v.1.5
      Software CyOSTM v.1.5 compatible applications
      Communication Protocol CyDP x.30 (Cybiko RF Digital Protocol)
      and Fast Communication Protocol
      Dynamic Virtual Local Wireless Network Automatically provided by CyOSTM and CyDP
      RF communication features
      Frequency 902-928 MHz
      Number of channels 30 digital channels
      Communication Rate 19200 bps each channel
      Chat Communication Range up to 150 ft indoor, up to 500 ft outdoor (environment dependent)
      File Transfer/Multi-Player Game Range 65 ft
      Max. on-line Cybiko computers 3000 (100 units on each of 30 channels)

      And speaking of handling things graciously, I think calling them "bastards" shows little grace.
  • Has Quake been ported to this? I wonder if you could use the wireless networking for a Beowulf cluster?
    • I'd wondered about distributed computing possibilities as well but, after doing some Cybiko programming, can tell you it's not well suited at all for the task. The processor's not particularly fast, and the round-trip time with their reliable messaging is on the order of a full *second*. It might be a reasonable tool for demonstrating (slowly) how distributed computing works though...

      I've had a group doing Cybiko programming for about a year now on some NSF-sponsored wireless networking teaching materials. We've put together apps to demonstrate a variety of routing algorithms (flooding, distance vector, and link state) using collections of Cybikos, and they work great for showing students how these things work.

      Brad Richards
      Computer Science Department
      Vassar College

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