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

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!