C.H.I.P.ing Away!

Things are getting hot at the NTC office. Because it’s summer. Because our team is growing. And because this C.H.I.P. project of ours is HEATING UP!

Wynter, Alex, Free Electrons, and Jason (our wireless expert extraordinaire) are pushing C.H.I.P.’s software tools forward in big ways.  Big ways like C.H.I.P.’s WiFi is working!

MEET ARI!

She’s joining the team and is a master of “all things non-technical” (her words).She wants to get you your C.H.I.P.s and she HATES being tardy.

Ari has dextrous eyebrows.

ATTENTION KERNEL HACKERS

We’re stoked with the response to the open sourcing of C.H.I.P.  Your ideas and comments are why we love Open Source.  For all you Kernel Hackers and eager Chipsters digging through the docs, we’ve set up a forum on our website at bbs.nextthing.co

Let’s take the technical discussions there, where answers can be easily sorted and turned into a resource for everyone.  Check it out!

As always, the latest and greatest C.H.I.P. documentation will be available (and current) on GitHub.  (Good catch last update, Ricky.)

If DockerHub is your bag, Wynter has a fully automated C.H.I.P. SDK now available as a docker container.

Wynter is coding…

FOLLOW ALONG ON TWITTER!

In addition to Kickstarter updates, we’re posting micro-updates on Twitter.  Want to be the most up to date on C.H.I.P.’s progress?  Follow @nextthingco!

Much much more to come! (M.M.M.T.C.) Stay tuned!

\(•◡•)/ – Everyone at @NextThingCo

 

 

 

 

Holy C.H.I.P! It’s C.H.I.P!!!

Dearest C.H.I.P.sters,

We. Have. Been. Busy.

Gus and Vanessa with Production C.H.I.P.s. Yes, you read that correctly.

THE FIRST PRODUCTION C.H.I.P.s

A brave honeybadger, not to be deterred from his honeycomb, Gus scurried to China to produce the first production C.H.I.P.s!  From here we’ll make final design decisions before kicking off a limited run for our Kernel Hacker Backers.  Would you like to know more? Check out the video!

OSCON 2015

Living a childhood dream, Dave spoke at the Open Source Convention in Portland. Detailing the journey from OTTO to C.H.I.P. and ignoring all manner of practical advice, he demoed both products. Live.

C.H.I.P. IS OPEN SOFTWARE!

Meanwhile, back in Oakland, Wynter, Alex and the Free Electrons team have been hacking away at C.H.I.P.s software, opening up the software repositories. Take a look!

Alex and Wynter love open sourcing!

Want to help with C.H.I.P.’s software?  Just miss the Kernel Hacker reward tier? Visit kernel.nextthing.co and let us know how you can help!

CHIP IS OPEN HARDWARE!

C.H.I.P.’s design files are licensed Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike.  That means you can download all the files to build your own C.H.I.P. modify it and use it as a starting point for your own projects! Git the files @ http://docs.nextthing.co/

The folks at Make Magazine put together a nice summary of C.H.I.P.’s open source status – http://makezine.com/2015/07/22/with-linux-and-creative-commons-the-9-chip-computer-reveals-its-open-source-details/

INTRODUCING MEGA C.H.I.P.

We needed a way to show off all of C.H.I.P.’s components to an auditorium full of people so Sharps took a break from assembling OTTO to build MEGA C.H.I.P.Like his older (and MUCH smaller) brother, MEGA C.H.I.P. is also fully open source!  You can download the plans on Github – https://github.com/NextThingCo/MegaCHIP-Hardware

Tim O’Reilly holds C.H.I.P. Not to be outdone, Dave holds MEGA C.H.I.P.

The banana is still for scale.

Much much more to come! (M.M.M.T.C.)

\(•◡•)/ – Everyone at @NextThingCo

 

 

BackerKit to the Future: Part 3

Hey, C.H.I.P.sters!!!

BACKERKIT LOCKDOWN IMMINENT

A GIF to drive the lockdown point home.

 

Today is the last day to add items to your pledge through BackerKit. As of 8 PM PDT (thanks Philippe!), the opportunity to pledge for additional items will be closed. This is it.

We will be processing payment on BackerKit additions next week to move full steam ahead on getting you your C.H.I.P.s.  We’ll remind you again to confirm your address before shipping starts, so even if you move, we can still get you your C.H.I.P.

Things are moving forward in big ways, and we can’t wait to show everyone the process.  Where we’re going, we don’t need roads…because Gus put offroad tires on the tuk tuk.

Great Scott. So much NTC coffee. Enough to last forever, if we’re GIFing fourth dimensionally.

Gus, found wearing a tiny pink half cowboy hat. Yes. He does feel lucky. Punk.

 

\(•◡•)/ – Everyone at @NextThingCo

BackerKit to the Future: Part 2

Many of you have already completed your surveys! Righteous. \m/(>.<)\m/

Some of you wanted more information, so here we go!!!

Dave ponders the nature (and pronunciation) of gigawatts.

Big Questions? BIG ANSWERS.

  • BackerKit is our official Kickstarter survey to collect your ship-to information. There is no other survey.  This is the survey.
  • If you still have not received an invite, please click here (chip.backerkit.com). This is the fastest, simplest, mom-approved way to recover your invite.
  • Any shipping credits (see the table in our last update) are automatically applied. If you did not see any shipping credits in BackerKit, it is likely that you are not in a country, or at a pledge reward tier, that receives discounted shipping.
  • If you have any questions about getting your invite, or if you feel you did not receive a shipping credit you were owed, please email support@backerkit.com.

WHEN SHOULD I DO THIS?

Soon!

Lockdown is this Friday, July 10th.

Lockdown only applies to any add-ons for your pledge.  You can change your shipping address up until we ship your reward but this will be the last chance to pledge for an additional C.H.I.P. and/or C.H.I.P. accessories until we open pre-orders on our own store later this year (C.H.I.P. will still be $9). Act now! Don’t delay! To keep up to date on pre-order availability and announcements, visitnextthing.co and sign up for the pre-order announcement list! Tell your friends.  It’s gonna be a party.

Also, thanks for being so responsive! Having accurate counts for manufacturing is, of course, VERY important to us.

And you folks using C.H.I.P. for something we can’t even imagine…we’re so excited to see what you can do with a nine dollar computer.

You’ve gotten Sharps’ attention, blown his mind, and he’s better for it.

\(•◡•)/ – Everyone at @NextThingCo

All about Open Source

Howdy Backers!

As we’ve mentioned, we built C.H.I.P. to make tiny powerful computers more accessible and easier to use. A huge part of making C.H.I.P. accessible is making sure that it can change to meet the needs of the community.

We’ve fielded a lot of questions about C.H.I.P.’s open source software and wanted to give some more detailed information and share some exciting news. If you love the guts of open source software and want to hear the latest, read on!

Mainline C.H.I.P. Kernel Changes

We want C.H.I.P. to be a happy and healthy member of the Linux open source community for many years to come. That means C.H.I.P. needs to run the official and current version of the Linux kernel.

Getting the official version of the Linux to run on C.H.I.P. requires making changes to the Linux kernel and building entirely new drivers for some of C.H.I.P.’s onboard hardware. Once all the updates are complete, they need to be added into the kernel’s source tree in a process called “Mainlining.”

Mainlining the kernel changes necessary for C.H.I.P. is no small task. It will take a huge and ongoing community effort. Luckily we’re standing on shoulders of giants: The amazing Linux-Sun-Xi community has made great progress on kernel support for Allwinner SoCs over the last few years. If you’re interested in the inner workings of the SoC’s that power C.H.I.P., take a look at their wiki – https://linux-sunxi.org

We’re incredibly excited to announce that we’ve partnered with one of the premier contributors to ARM Linux: Free Electrons! We will be collaborating with their amazing team of ARM Linux engineers, and of course our Kernel Hacker backers to help us test and mainline C.H.I.P.’s kernel modifications as we move forward.

Bottom line: Wynter, Alex, and Dave will be working very closely with Free Electrons and the C.H.I.P. Kernel Hacker backers over the next 6 months to make sure C.H.I.P.’s software is open, standard and most importantly FREE.

Binary Blobs, GPL Violations and Moving Forward

As members of the open source community, we take license violations very seriously. We’ve had a productive and active dialog with our friends at Allwinner about the GPL violations present in the released CedarX drivers and are commited to helping them resolve the issues.

Allwinner’s engineers have already spent hundreds of hours doing static analysis to locate and repair GPL violating components of their drivers, and are continuing to dig through, line by line. It’s a time-consuming process complicated by intellectual property restrictions inherent in the SoC business.

Allwinner’s most recent code release addresses GPL violations in three ways:

  • New code architecture: Driver has been split into several plugins, one plugin per video format.
  • GPL-compliant: We have scanned and analyzed the code to ensure that there is no GPL code used or called.
  • Partial CedarX video decoder source code release: MPEG2, MPEG4, MJPEG, and H264 drivers source code available.

There is a long road ahead, but we’re extremely excited at the progress made already, and the good-faith effort shown by partners on all sides.

Ultimately, our goal is to have as few binary blobs present in the source tree required to use C.H.I.P. as possible. Presently, binary blobs are required for 3 parts of the R8 SoC software stack:

  • ARM Mali 400 Driver (3D graphics acceleration)
  • C2D (2D acceleration)
  • CedarX (Video Hardware Encoding/Decoding)

Our plan is to mainline support for user-space drivers for these binary blobs. But we’re also actively exploring ways that we can eliminate the need for these binary blobs altogether. We will also provide Chipsters who want a completely FOSS C.H.I.P. OS builds that are blob-free!

¡Viva C.H.I.P.!

– Dave, Richard, Thomas, Gus, Wynter, Vanessa, Alex, Sharps, and George @nextthingco