Sometime in May of this year, my six-year-old (purchased in January 2011) Sony Dash Personal Internet Viewer (HID-C10) received a control panel update informing me that service for the device would end in July.
The last firmware update (from version 1.7.1461 to 1.7.1526) was performed on April 08, 2016, after the device experienced issues “downloading the main control panel,” rendering it useless.
Over the 6+ years that I had owned the unit, there were intermittent issues with Sony’s backend servers that kept it inactive. But Sony was always able to issue firmware updates to keep the service going—until July of this year.
The Sony Dash is a small tabletop alarm clock-radio-weather/gadget with a 7″ touchscreen that sold for $199 when initially released in April 2010. Its functionality relied 100% on the Internet; hence, built-in WiFi (a/g) is included.
Aside from its beautiful design, the main attraction of the gadget, like a smartphone, is its ability to load additional “widgets” (or apps) from its built-in memory. It enabled owners to stream videos and music from content providers such as Netflix, YouTube, Amazon, Pandora, Slacker, and Sony Music. There are also thousands of other useful widgets, ranging from the arts to zoology.
And so, one day in July this year, I saw the dreaded firmware update – 1.7.1604– that would turn an otherwise very useful device into a door stopper.
Of course, I did not do the firmware update, but instead called Sony’s customer service (in the U.S., it’s 1-800-222-7669) to ask them what to do with a useless unit.
To the company’s credit, it promptly replaced a product that had reached its ‘end-of-life’ (aka, planned obsolescence), with a choice of either an alarm clock/AM-FM radio (ICF-C1) or a Bluetooth speaker (XB10) after I e-mailed the image of the unit’s serial number.
When the replacement ICF-C1 clock radio arrived a week later via FedEx (shipping also paid by Sony), I grabbed the Dash that sat atop one of my stereo speakers – still with the ‘Update available’ screen- and yanked out its power supply.
Meanwhile, somewhere in the coastal city of San Diego, California, a guy had been very busy writing code to port the Dash (running firmware 1.7.1526) to make it work with Chumby.com’s server(s) after Sony’s May software update alert.
Chumby (now, operated by Blue Octy, LLC) is a small company behind a line of very affordable “Internet viewers” similar to the Dash. The Dash runs on an OS modified from the Chumby OS.
Finally, in early August, Blue Octy released a software patch (for the Dash HID-C10 model only) that resurrected some Dash units. The patch is Chumby-HIDC10-1.0.0.zip. It could also be downloaded here.
So, if you have an HID-C10 Sony Dash, just ensure that your unit is running firmware 1.7.1526. If you had accidentally installed firmware 1.7.1604 and bricked the unit, simply revert to firmware 1.7.1526 via the instructions here before applying the patch.
If you applied the patch correctly, you should have restored some functionality to your Dash, including the clock, weather, and a few radio stations.
A $3 monthly subscription fee would allow access to numerous apps and multiple channels on this gadget that… simply refuses to go away.
