BackerKit to the Future

C.H.I.P.sters!!!

We’ve completed our BackerKit invites!!! Thanks for your patience!

Everyone should have received an invite, even if your Kickstarter payment failed to process. If you haven’t seen your invite yet, please check your email’s spam folder. If it’s not there, contact support@backerkit.com and we’ll get you into the system ASAP.

LOCKDOWN

We’ve set our lockdown date for Friday July 10, 2015, at 7 PM PST, so be sure to have your survey back to us by then.

The office on lockdown.

CLARIFYING A FEW SHIPPING QUESTIONS…

International Shipping

Our international shipping reductions only applied to light packages under 500g (1lb) to countries with the most C.H.I.P. backers (UK, EU, Canada, Australia, and Japan). This affects backers at the C.H.I.P., C.H.I.P. + battery, C.H.I.P. + VGA, and the C.H.I.P. + HDMI reward tiers in those countries.

Because the “All the Things Split Shipment” reward tier includes the shipping of a single C.H.I.P. in December, the reductions apply for backers at that tier as well. The shipping for these tiers has been adjusted accordingly within BackerKit. Here is a breakdown of the changes, and to which countries they apply.

Shipping for Add-ons

If you’d like to pledge for an additional C.H.I.P. you may add one to your pledge without additional shipping.

C.H.I.P. accessories are scheduled to be shipped in May 2016. Backers in the $9 reward tiers who would like to add an accessory to their pledge will see an additional shipping charge to reflect a second shipment in May.

Please keep in mind that BackerKit, like Kickstarter, is not a store, but a way to manage your reward pledge and continue to support C.H.I.P.

\(•◡•)/ – Dave, Gus, Thomas, Wynter, Sharps, Vanessa, Alex, George, and Richard (AKA everyone at @nextthingco)

Why are things so heavy in the future? Is there a problem with the Earth’s gravitational pull?

 

C.H.I.P. (s?!?!?!)

C.h.i.p.sters!!!

We’re back! And we have big news! We’ve taken a {short} rest, payments have been processed and we’re working closely with the BackerKit team to finalize our post-campaign system.

BackerKit’s logo, clearly.

As many of you know, BackerKit allows you to add items to your Kickstarter pledge. Through discussions with our suppliers and manufacturing partners about the demand for C.H.I.P., we’re happy to announce that every backer can now add 1 additional C.H.I.P. to their pledge with no additional shipping charge! Of course, you’ll be able to add PocketC.H.I.P., adapters, and cables as well. Please note, additional shipping charges may apply.

SO WHAT HAPPENS NOW?

Over the next week, you’ll receive an invite to the C.H.I.P. BackerKit. Because there are almost 40,000 of you, we’ll be sending out invitations in groups by reward tier. Everyone will get an invitation. Nothing will sell out. We’ll still ship according to our reward tiers.

NOTE: Any international shipping credit will automatically be applied within BackerKit.

You do not need to set up a login and password to use BackerKit. If you use your Facebook login for Kickstarter, the survey will be sent to the email attached to your Facebook account. Just follow the link to fill out the survey, add any add-ons you want, and you’re good to go.

If you decide to change your add-ons and address, you may do so before our cut-off date, which will be announced later. If your address changes before shipping, don’t worry. We’ll send a final reminder to adjust your address before we ship.

Please get your BackerKit survey filled out and back to us as soon as you can. BackerKit is great.  They’ve been super helpful through this process with us. We’re all in good hands with them. Of course, we will be here as well.  Here we go! Stay tuned!

Thomas from BackerKit, very excited about PocketC.H.I.P.

As always, \(•◡•)/

– Dave, Gus, Thomas, Wynter, Sharps, Vanessa, Alex, George, and Richard (AKA everyone at @nextthingco)

 

 

THANK YOU, BACKERS!!! \(•◡•)/ NEXT THINGS!!!

Amazing C.H.I.P.sters!!!

Typed words can only express so much.  We’d much rather show you how thankful we are for your overwhelming support and encouragement throughout the last month. Over 50,000 C.H.I.P.s! Over 15,000 PocketC.H.I.P.s! And more importantly, almost 40,000 backers! We still can’t believe there are SO MANY C.H.I.P.STERS!! You are really the best! \(•◡•)/ <3

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

First, Kickstarter needs to transfer the campaign pledge funds (which can take up to 2 weeks) so we can start to place those high-volume component orders.  Kickstarter will charge your credit card and collect your pledge. It’s possible that the transaction may be declined due to an expired card, insufficient funds, or safety measures that require you to contact your card provider before payment can be completed. If this is the case, Kickstarter will send an automatic email to alert you.Please keep an eye open for any payment issues via email from Kickstarter.

Second, we have to find out what add-ons and accessories you want and where you want us to ship them. We will be sending our BackerKit survey out to collect this information after Kickstarter pledges have been cleared and transferred.

We will give you a heads up before we send the survey so you can watch for it. It is important that when you receive the survey, you get it back to us as quickly as you can. Our ability to order the right quantities of parts depends on receiving this information from all of you ASAP. Don’t worry — we’ll round up on quantities. 🙂

You do not need to make a login and password to fill out your survey, just fill it out and you’re all good to go!

If you use your Facebook login for your Kickstarter account, the BackerKit invite will be sent to the email you used for your Facebook account. If you have another email you prefer it to be sent to, please email support@backerkit.com.

Remember: You’ll receive an email for a BackerKit survey in approximately two weeks. BackerKit allows you to confirm your reward selection, add on accessories, and update your shipping info.

_____________________________

PRE-ORDERS

We won’t be accepting pre-orders for now —  Finding our early adopters is what the Kickstarter campaign was for! Y’all are our community and we want to make sure you’re taken care of first and foremost.  Preorders will open once we’ve made headway into fulfilling your pledges.  To sign up for preorder announcements and general mailing list goodness, visit nextthing.co. Also, to clear up a little confusion: when preorders do open up, thanks to your support and encouragement right now, C.H.I.P. will still be $9.

DEVELOPMENT

  • Next Things in Hardware: We’re finalizing design revisions for C.H.I.P., PocketC.H.I.P., and the video adapters. As dimensions, pin-outs, and specifications firm up, we will be posting updates on our website and message board. Ultimately, we’ll be releasing source files around the time our Alpha boards are ready and cleared to send to Kernel Hacker backers. It’s a long road of design decisions, testing, certifications, testing, more testing, and testing again. Then trying it out with 1,000 brave kernel-hacking souls, tweaking the hardware design as we learn things from the alpha testers, and doing the testing and certifications all over again. It’s not going to be an easy next 4 months, but with your amazing support behind us, we can’t wait to get started!
  • Next Things in Software: We are preparing Linux to boot right off C.H.I.P.’s solid state memory and starting to get our favorite programs running happily on C.H.I.P. In order to support all of C.H.I.P.’s features, we will be putting a lot of programming work into building and managing drivers. Thankfully, we are not alone in the effort! We are super excited to start working with the experienced code warriors at Free Electrons and the amazing ARM Linux community.

STAY TUNED! 

The PocketC.H.I.P. design video is just a start.  We want the process of bringing C.H.I.P. to you to be as open as possible. Moving forward, we’ll be posting updates and videos along the way so you can watch C.H.I.P. become reality. Follow along on Kickstarter or on twitter (@nextthingco).

Big shout out to the reddit community, alive and active atreddit.com/r/chipcommunity

and our fan site ( \(•◡•)/ ) thechipguys.com.

JUST TO REITERATE… 

WE COULDN’T HAVE DONE IT WITHOUT EACH AND EVERY ONE OF YOU WONDERFUL CHIPSTERS.

We were all buzzing with excitement for months leading up to the campaign and it’s been awesome to finally share with everyone!  You’ve all been absolutely fantastic.  Thank you for helping us make this possible.  This is an amazing start to a very exciting journey and we’re so excited to have you with us!

\(•◡•)/ – Dave, Gus, Thomas, Wynter, Sharps, Vanessa, Alex, George, and Richard (AKA everyone at @nextthingco)

P.S. – Here are a few of our favorite campaign snapshots!

Portable Fragging with PocketC.H.I.P.!!!

Hey C.H.I.P.sters!

As promised, we made time for some more PocketC.H.I.P. demo action. Over the last few days, we’ve been stress testing the PocketC.H.I.P. prototypes and we’ve finally found the perfect test: PocketC.H.I.P. running QUAKE 3!!!

Quake 3 or more specifically IOQuake3 with the Open Arena content pack is a great way to see the real power of PocketC.H.I.P. and it’s completely free and open source!

Take a look!

Brought to you by: the power of AWESOME open source projects!

Getting IOQuake up and running was amazingly straightforward thanks to these great open source projects:

Tell us your ideas for other PocketC.H.I.P. demos!  What kinds of things do you want to see?

Post your ideas in the update comments or on twitter – @nextthingco

PocketC.H.I.P. LAN Party anyone? 😉

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

International C.H.I.P.ping!

C.H.I.P.’s INTERNATIONAL SHIPPING is now up to 44% cheaper!!!

We looked into it (extensively) and are super happy to announce major reductions to international shipping costs. It’s taken three weeks of hard work and countless import forms, but we have finally found logistics agents who can mix and match distribution centers and freight forwarders!

We will be shipping by many different methods and colors.

This means we’ll be setting up distribution centers in, or near, the countries and zones with the most C.H.I.P. backers. That way we can reduce to-your-door shipping costs for light packages under 500g (1lb).

“But @nextthing, what does this mean for me?” For about 3/4 of our backers, that means the same plan as before — shipping into OAK or LAX and distributing domestically via USPS. For backers in Canada, the UK, EU, Australia, and Japan, however, this means we are reducing shipping costs by 20% to 44%!(!!)

Kickstarter doesn’t have a way for us to refund back the difference in updated shipping costs for existing pledges, so we’re providing two options:

  •  A fresh pledge reward tier for 5,000 C.H.I.P.s shipping in March with the new reduced shipping costsTo join this new tier, please click *MANAGE MY PLEDGE* on the campaign page and select the March C.H.I.P. tier.
  • Special treats and accessories only available via BACKERKIT post-campaign for backers who wind up with a little extra left on their pledge.

To be clear, this means all backers will get follow-up messages fromBACKERKIT after the campaign ends, and will have the opportunity to add on (or purchase separately) extras and accessories at that point. Remember: we’ll have those fun extras and surprises in BACKERKIT available for ALL our backers… so stay tuned to find out more!

\(•◡•)/ – Dave, Gus, Thomas, Wynter, Sharps, Vanessa, Alex, George, and Richard (AKA everyone at @nextthingco)