PocketC.H.I.P. and PICO-8: A Dream Team at Dreamforce

Middle School students learning to code with PICO-8 and PocketC.H.I.P.

Jessica Koehler from Sparkiverse teaching students to code with PICO-8 on PocketC.H.I.P.

SAN FRANCISCO–170,000 Salesforce customers descended upon the massive 700,000 square foot Moscone Center for Dreamforce, the annual Salesforce conference for developers and power users. Tucked away in a corner of Moscone West, 50 of these attendees were middle school students who participated in the first ever Next Thing Co. learn to code camp.

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3 Community Tutorials: Install Transport Tycoon, XFCE, and a Command-Line GitHub Utility

Jake showing off OpenTTD on PocketC.H.I.P.

Jake showing off OpenTTD on PocketC.H.I.P.

Become a Transportation Tycoon, bring the C.H.I.P. desktop computing experience to PocketC.H.I.P., and browse the millions of GitHub repositories from the geekiness of the command-line, all on PocketC.H.I.P.!

If you’re working on a cool project, make sure to share it with the community. Tweet about it, write a Facebook post, or join the conversation in the forum. We can’t wait to see what you’re working on.
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Community Made: Sumo Robots, Airplane Tracking, and Even More PocketC.H.I.P. Case Customization

PocketC.H.I.P. with a software defined radio attached.

Ethan Rose’s PocketC.H.I.P. with a software defined radio attached

This week the community is using C.H.I.P. as the brain of a competitive robot, PocketC.H.I.P. and software defined radio to decode and track airplanes, and 3D printing and old consumer electronics to personalize their PocketC.H.I.P. enclosure.

No matter what you’re doing with C.H.I.P. and PocketC.H.I.P., share it with the community. Snap a photo and share it on Twitter, message us on Facebook, or join the conversation in the forum. No matter how you decide to participate, C.H.I.P. and PocketC.H.I.P. are more fun when you share.

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Here’s Exactly How to Hack a Bigger Screen onto PocketC.H.I.P.

Tony showing off his hacked PocketC.H.I.P.

Tony showing off his hacked PocketC.H.I.P. with larger screen

Resourceful Pocketeers on the forums have banded together to figure out how to swap out the stock LCD screen on PocketC.H.I.P. for an even bigger, 5″ LCD capable of rendering at 800×480 pixels.

MarekLew was the first to connect the bigger screen to PocketC.H.I.P. and share the news in the forum. Kilrah completed the hack soon after and shared some great photos of the screen swap process. And cmspooner’s post explained how to calibrate the touchscreen using a config file.

This post synthesizes the information from the three threads into one easy-to-deploy configuration file. Plus, having everything in a config file means that even if you reboot PocketC.H.I.P., the settings with remain in effect.
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3 New Community Tutorials: Play OpenRCT2, Chat with Pidgin, and Customize your MOTD

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Another week of shipping PocketC.H.I.P.s, another week of original community created tutorials. Community members Kainxkitsune, Ramayaben, and Neto aren’t just using PocketC.H.I.P., they are helping others get the most out of their device by writing projects.

Thanks to their documentation it’s now easier than ever to install Open RollerCoaster Tycoon 2, use the multi-protocol chat client Pidgin, and customize the command-line message of the day (MOTD) that welcomes users upon remote login.

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