First Impressions of a $9 CHIP Computer | Hacker News Reader

First Impressions of a $9 CHIP Computer

spin.atomicobject.com

213 pointsingve111 comments

I'm going to go ahead and say it. It doesn't count until I can buy them in any quantity at any time for $9 each. Shipping to a few backers doesn't count. "One per customer, supplies limited" doesn't count. 6 month waiting time, "special" shipping charges/handling fees/only available as part of a more expensive "kit"... you get the idea.

This is a bog-standard device in a sea of similar SBC's. The entire magic here is the price. Honestly, I don't even "believe" in the Pi zero yet. It could still turn out to be a publicity stunt produced in a very limited quantity just to get everyone talking.

Until its a product you buy a dozen at a time and leave behind in the projects in your wake, the magic hasn't happened yet. Otherwise, you pull it out of those projects because its a rare specimen you might not be able to get another of any time soon. It doesn't matter if it only cost $9 if you can't get any more of them.

But I want to believe!

To expand on your point:

"Quantity has a quality all its own." — Stalin

The point of cheap computing is ubiquitous computing. Doing things you couldn't seriously imagine previously because it would have felt like an "investment" and you would have psychologically needed a "return" on that investment, even if you intellectually understood that it was less than X cups of coffee or that you'd only be mildly peeved if you spent that much on a book which turned out to be a loser.

This is related to threshold pricing: The fact that $20.00 looks different from $19.99, and that that kind of thing has an impact. However, this goes beyond just-under pricing; it extends to things which aren't blatant black-hat mind hacking tricks, into more benign territory where a $50.00 project just feels different from a $20.00 project, even if it involves the same amount of labor; the $50.00 project feels like "This is close to $100 of equipment. I need to make this count", but the $20.00 project feels like "This is one new book's worth of stuff. It might work, it might not. Worth a shot."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threshold_price-point

http://www.frugalsolutions.org/Toolbox/Lower-price-threshold...

The final piece is what you mentioned: Scarcity makes things psychologically valuable. This is a well-known effect. If some piece of your build is rare, even if it was cheap, it still has a value which skews your willingness to use it. It's suddenly something which can't be "wasted". OTOH, if you know you could buy a dozen of them at any time and get them in a few days with the cheap shipping option, the psychological resistance to using them goes way down.

You can pre-order multiple boards on their website, with affordable shipping: http://getchip.com/

The maximum order quantity is 5 C.H.I.Ps per order, which sounds in line with them having a limited production capacity and wanting to spread it over more customers.

Pre-order is not order.

What got me in was the pocket-chip add on. Kind of a PDA wrapper that will let me do a little bit of IoT without too much soldering! That was the unique story here for me as opposed to the dozens of other cheap SBCs.

I couldn't be more disappointed with Raspberry Pi regarding their availability of the Zero. It's been four months since they announced "immediate availability" and seemingly the only way you can get a $5 Pi is to buy a $40 bundle. If you can't buy it in numbers needed then it simply doesn't exist.

Firstly, only kudos to them for having designed the Zero in the first place, and I'm sure they intended it to be available in volume this many months after release.

However, until they can reach volume on a major released project (e.g. the Zero), they should be careful about getting too much press visibility on said product. As of 2016, Raspberry Pi is world-wide name with international name recognition, and it can only hurt the organization when its products marketed at a $5 USD price point are, in practice, only really available at $40+ USD, to the majority of its potential customers, and this many months after release.

On the plus side - all the donations the Raspberry Pi Foundation received from sales of the Zero helped fund a teacher training course that is being rolled out across the United States.

That is a indeed a plus. Indeed in the gparent comment I only wished to point out 1 way in which the organization could improve should they wish. Getting open source design part-sourced, assembled and then shipped in volume levels is still a business process in nascency. I'm sure they face abundant challenges on the supplier-side. Regardless, I do hope that against all odds, volume manufactured open source hardware becomes a force to be reckoned with in the decades to come - perhaps analogously to how FOSS Linux dominated in its own and ever-expanding arena.

The Raspberry Pi Foundation don't care, never have, and it's never really come back to bite them because the tech press likes the story they're selling. The $5 British computer makes for a great narrative, and it's a great PR technique too; for instance, every comment thread on BBC's micro:bit is full of people arguing that the only reason they didn't use the $5 Pi Zero is because of NIH syndrome.

They've understood that PR is worth screwing users over since day minus-one. Even before the Pi launched, they were encouraging their supporters to promote it to non-technical users as a media box and dismissing suggestions that this might leave a bad impression because they couldn't get it working. Cut to after the launch, and the narrative is that the Pi is getting unfair criticism from non-technical users who mistakenly thought it was a media box when obviously it isn't.

I was able to buy one from Adafruit when they were announced.

http://i.imgur.com/aOtvz9H.png

I got so burned on the Pebble and its four months of bullshit stalling that I don't participate in Kickstarter anymore. I think we need something more like an accelerator for these projects where they take a bigger cut but help people with their pitch video and especially with logistics.

A thing stops being new and interesting if you have to wait that long to get it. The competition doesn't stop improving their product and/or price point just because you have supply chain problems.

And it sucks all the joy out of the purchase to have to wait 3+ extra months for something you already paid for.

You didn't really pay for anything except a promise that they would maybe try to get you something. Kickstarter has all the risks of an investor with none of the payoff - like equity in the business.

100% agreed. The whole CHIP/Pi Zero "out of stock indefinitely" is the ultimate bottom line.

Wow! Built-in Wifi + 4GB storage for $9? This changes the entire scope of my repeatedly-postponed environmental monitoring project. I can wire a $10 temperature/humidity sensor and put 40-50 of these devices around the building for $1k. I would easily pay $50 for a pre-made device that:

1) Is built using CHIP and has a simply case + power adapter

2) Is wired to https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10167

3) Has an easy Wifi setup process and does DHCP

4) Lets me do a GET http://ip/status and gives me JSON of the current temperature and humidity.

Then all I have to worry about is setting up a cron job that wgets all 50 devices and logs the result to DB.

FYI equivalent systems, even non-NIST-calibrated ones cost $500/device or more.

You can get zigbee ones from Omega [1] for around $200. Still kinda pricey but they are battery powered and optionally come with nema enclosures so you can stick them nearly anywhere. But having said that they were are not the most reliable product I've ever used. Getting it under $50 would be nice even if also not reliable.

[1] http://www.omega.com/guides/humidity.html

I've done 3 and 4 for Arduino; here is my DHCP and DNS server (https://github.com/pkulchenko/DHCPLite) that also handles GET requests for reading analog or digital pin values (full example: https://github.com/pkulchenko/DHCPLite/blob/master/examples/...).

Not $50, you can do all of that with a $5 ESP8266. The CHIP is IMO enormously overpowered for what you're describing. The ESPs can do HTTP/MQTT/etc directly themselves, but I think an ideal use for the CHIP is as a hub with the ESP's reporting sensor data and the CHIP logging data.

Also, as a warning from experience the DHT22's aren't that great and they have been a headache. They are relatively expensive, not very precise and also I've seen a huge variation in their manufacturing quality. The relative humidity readings in particular are wildly inaccurate. There are better temperature sensors that cost less than a dollar (DS18) and to get reliable humidity readings you really need something nicer like the SHT-31.

Well, on the ESP8266 you have to code directly in C with the library or in MicroPython, which isn't fantastic - on the CHIP you use whatever you (Go, Node, real Python, Java) that compiles to ARM for $4 more with easier I/O.

You can also use node.js, or lua on the ESP.

It's not the perfect solution for everything; but it's tiny, and it costs $1.50 on aliexpress / banggood, and there's a ton of code for it.

If you need a module that is mono-task, tiny, cheap and reliable, it's hard to go past the ESP.

If you're looking for a full computer, then it's an obvious choice towards CHIP / Raspberry PI, etc

What's wrong with coding in C? You're unlikely to ever need anything too complex on such a device, so C is a totally adequate choice.

Totally adequate if the goal is to produce content for the @InternetOfShit guy, unless "coffee at work" for you means sharing a drink and cracking jokes with Ken Thompson and John Carmack.

I'd consider the ESP8266 if I could run Go or Rust on it.

Mind explaining what did you mean by this? For the typical scale of a esp8266 project there is no difference between C and Go and Rust. Actually, C can be much safer of you follow MISRA and use all the appropriate tools.

My point is though that these are complementary. Read sensor -> send data is a trivial task that takes a few lines of code, most of which is importing libraries and the CHIP is vastly overpowered. I'm saying, put your complex data logging/smart home/whatever logic in <language of choice> on the CHIP and have your sensors be simple (read: reliable) nodes that connect to the CHIP as a hub. It's not so much a matter of price as it is minimizing complexity.

Also I don't know many people who use the native C SDK for the ESP8266. Most people use Arduino (simplified C++), but there's also Lua, Javascript and Python.

The problem with the CHIP/Pi Zero/etc is that I now have tens of devices sitting in my network, ready to be owned if I don't regularly update them all.

Yeah, I have a separate encrypted Wifi that isn't routed to the Internet. Only a heavily firewalled RasPi is, so anything that needs data from the Internet has to ask that. I don't particularly trust any IoT devices security wise, either made by me or commercial, but it can be mitigated and I'm not really concerned.

You seem knowledgeable about sensors. Do you have any recommendations for a somewhat accurate soil humidity sensor?

It's my understanding (and correct me if I'm wrong here) that it's difficult to keep it accurate by the very mechanism of how they work. You're measuring the conductivity between two probes and as time goes on the probes will corrode resulting in miscalculated soil moisture levels.

Yeah, I haven't done much with soil moisture but AFAIK they're all basically the same design to measure resistance between two probes. They can be reasonably accurate though, at least enough to do something like tracking when to water plants and stuff.

If OP searches for "Arduino soil moisture sensor" he/she will find find plenty. There's not a whole lot of difference between them.

I'm always curious about these sorts of answers, because from an outsiders perspective, you may as well be talking in another language.

From what I can tell the ESP8266 is some sort of wifi enabled...chip? That you need to solder onto something or plug onto a breadboard, then you need an arduino for some unstated reason. What is an arduino? how do you make these two things interact? How do you provide power to these things? why are there so many arduinos?

I think the advantage of these single board computers are they are a much lower barrier to entry if you don't have that much knowledge of electronics, but have more experience of navigating Linux systems and writing software.

The ESP8266 is actually a system on a board, too. Essentially, it's a tiny microcontroller, with Wifi and a few GPIO connections, in a very small form factor, for a very small price.

You don't need to solder it to anything (it already comes soldered on its own board). You don't an external microcontroller to use it. It is standalone. It is compatible with the 'Arduino'. The Arduino is a family of microcontrollers built from the ground up to be easy to use. Easy to use software, easy to program (Variant of C) - and more importantly, heaps of support and tutorials online.

Honestly, the most difficult thing about using the ESP is powering and programming it. It takes 3.3V - and only 3.3V, so finding an appropriate power supply can be trickly. It programs over serial, so you need to use a USB > serial module - $1.30 [1]

The modules themselves are super cheap: - $1.50 [0] There's a very strong community behind the module: http://www.esp8266.com/

Essentially: Don't be scared: there's an initial learning curve that is very gentle, and you'll suddenly find unlimited uses for these tiny little modules.

I've got modules that show build statuses, affiliate account activity.. etc.

They also work, as mentioned, exceptionally well in a flock reporting to a main system - which may be a CHIP system, Raspberry PI, OpenWRT router, etc.

[0] http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Free-Shipping-2pcs-lot-ESP826... [1] http://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale?catId=0&initiative_id=SB...

Great reply, thanks. Are there any projects/tutorials/kits out there that go a bit beyond the standard "turn the led on/off"?

Search for "esp8266" in the Learn sections of Adafruit's and Sparkfun's sites. There's also esp8266.com. I think the most amazing thing I've seen is a VNC client running on an ESP8266 with a LCD touchscreen.

The "raw" parts are super-cheap but when getting started I think it's much easier to get started on a still pretty cheap breakout board. I have a Sparkfun ESP8266 Thing I haven't started playing with yet but if getting one today I'd get the Adafruit Feather HUZZAH ("Feather" is their new line of micro controller boards that share a form factor, "HUZZAH" is what they call all their ESP8266 products).

Let me second the Adafruit Feather for getting stated with the ESP8266.

Here's a link:

https://www.adafruit.com/products/2821

There's also the WeMos boards, which can be had for $3-4. Those are my workhorses.

http://www.cnx-software.com/2016/02/19/4-wemos-d1-mini-esp82...

I can also recommend the WeMos D1 mini, it's the best I've seen so far.

There's the Adafruit and Hackaday tutorials as already mentioned, plus Reddit has /r/esp8266 which has some good resources.

I also have a project where I built a smart thermostat that aggregates sensor data fed from multiple ESP8266 sensors that is pretty involved. I've been meaning to write it up in detail to share on HN and I'll probably have time to sometime in the next couple months.

I am wanting to do something similar and would definitely read your write up.

You can see my projects here:

https://www.stavros.io/series/esp8266/

Also, this tag has more generic hardware stuff:

https://www.stavros.io/series/hardware/

I would also be very interested in reading the details on your project. Look forward to seeing it on HN.

Check out Neil Kolban's book on the ESP8266 [1]. I’m reading through this out-of-order just to get an idea about how the esp8266 works.

[1]:https://leanpub.com/ESP8266_ESP32

> The Arduino is a family of microcontrollers built from the ground up to be easy to use. Easy to use software, easy to program (Variant of C) - and more importantly, heaps of support and tutorials online.

The Arduino is _not_ a familiy of microcontrollers, it's a family of dev boards (well, more like an ecosystem) and most Arduinos are based on AVR microcontrollers (but not all of them as far as I remember).

I'd argue that Arduino isn't even fundamentally a hardware thing. I can code an Arduino application (sketch) and upload it directly to an Atmel chip on a breadboard, with no other components present at run-time. Atmel didn't make the chip as an Arduino (they made it to control toaster ovens or whatever), so in that scenario there's no Arduino except for their boot loader and runtime library.

Technically the ESP8266 is a modular wifi controller, isn't it? That is, it's one of those gadgets that's supposed to sit on a daughterboard and provide wifi services with embedded TCP/IP stack to another microprocessor. (I hear.) It just so happens that it's own processor is powerful enough and flexible enough to be useful as a microprocessor in its own right.

I wonder what other common bits of electronics might have useful amounts of processing power...

I'm reminded of Sifteo Cubes, which managed to get SNES-level graphics out of a microcontroller normally used in wireless keyboards.

https://blog.adafruit.com/2012/12/05/how-we-built-a-super-ni...

$50 (or less) WiFi enabled SD cards (intended for use in cameras to automatically upload pictures) have an ARM processor running linux.

http://haxit.blogspot.ch/2013/08/hacking-transcend-wifi-sd-c...

http://www.amazon.com/Transcend-Wi-Fi-Class-Memory-TS32GWSDH...

Technically, ESP8266 refers to a chipset, but typically now refers to the PCB with integrated antenna, etc.

There are multiple versions - seemingly incremented at random by chinese manufacturers - we're up to the ESP-14 now - http://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale?catId=0&initiative_id=SB...

You can program the esp with node as well as several other languages. Its actually easier to use than a full SBC because you don't have to worry about an OS.

The chip is highly integrated. You may need a breakout board (like NodeMCU), or simply deadbug it, in order to flash it. You can do it with arduino if you already have one, but a simple standalone FTDI USB-to-serial stick would be sufficient.

Then the module itself can run with very little external stuff - just power it with 3.3v, there are multiple options of doing so (but forget about a transformerless AC source, this thing eats up to 500mA).

You may also want a simple debounced reset button, and that's it.

The ESP8266 is a microcontroller with integrated WiFi. The main difference between a microcontroller and something like the CHIP or RasPi is that they are much less powerful and are designed to run a single program instead of running a general operating system like CHIP does. They're what you use for single-purpose devices like a weather station or a light switch, while I think of small computers like CHIP as being better suited to serving as the brains for controlling sensor networks and such.

"Arduino" is used to refer both to a family of microcontrollers based on an Atmel processor as well as a set of libraries designed to make programming microcontrollers accessible to people without embedded hardware experience. Originally, the ESP8266 was marketed as a simple serial Wifi adapter for the (hardware called) Arduino, but the community quickly realized that they could be programmed on their own and used to replace the Arduino. Subsequently, the Arduino libraries were ported to the ESP8266, making it instantly much more accessible as well as giving it access to a huge range of libraries for interfacing with different hardware and software.

ESP8266 refers specifically to the processor, but it is usually sold in an integrated package with onboard memory and antenna etc. There are several of these packages for different uses, called e.g. ESP-01 or ESP-12e. While you can use these modules yourself with a bit of knowhow and some deft soldering, much easier is to buy a prepackaged dev board like the NodeMCU or WeMos D1. These are basically the equivalent to a CHIP (albeit again much fewer IO pins)- they pair an ESP integrated module (usually the ESP-12e) with all the supporting hardware needed to power and program the module. You just plug in a USB cable, load your code on and connect whatever external devices to the GPIO pins.

I didn't have any significant electronics knowledge when I dove in head first. Arduino is designed to be accessible and there are plenty of kits with detailed instructions and all the parts you need. The ESP8266 has been wildly popular in the last year or so because it's got Wifi + compatible with Arduino (i.e. easy) + dirt cheap, which was previously unheard of.

I bought an ESP8266 dev board (<$10 CAD shipped!) for side projects, and I think it's great for hobbyists.

But I'm curious if Espressif actually have any design wins? I mean I don't mind using the community Arduino port (which is awesome), and buying from...unknown suppliers :) but is thing commercially viable or just a hobbyist gadget?

I got 10 for 38$ CAD shipped from Aliexpress. You could probably get them for even cheaper right now (though the USD > CAD is worst than it was at the time).

That's awesome, and that is dev boards or just the chip itself ?

I got the "NodeMcu Lua WIFI Internet Things development board based ESP8266 CP2102 Arduino" a while ago on eBay for $6.85 USD, price has now dropped to $4.76 USD, plus CAD is better-ish.

I am a ESP8266 fan but not sure that I'd be confident enough to do a product with the ESP8266.

Depends on what you want to do. I generally recommend the WeMos D1 mini, because there's only one of it, while there are like ten NodeMCU boards and only some are good. If you need something more bare, I recommend buying ESP8266 12E or 12F boards and using my small breakout:

https://github.com/skorokithakis/tiny-ESP8266-breakout

It's originally intended as a commercial product to make smart home type stuff and the hobby interest is a bit of a lucky accident. It's still pretty new by industry standards so it's just starting to appear in products, mostly very cheap wifi-enabled plugs and stuff. Itead makes a pretty sweet wifi-enabled switch for about $6.00 shipped that is hackable to put your own tailor made firmware on. Pete Scargill has a great writeup on them and I have one myself that I put in the wall to control my overhead lights. They're remarkably well made for how cheap they are.

> http://tech.scargill.net/itead-slampher-and-sonoff/

Have you thought about using devices like the ESP8266? [1]

You could probably work out a way to wire in the humidity sensor onto that, and scale it up via a printed PCB.

And instead of worrying about GETs, you can program the device to report in via MQTT to a central server.

You likely know all this, just curious :)

[1] https://www.sparkfun.com/products/13678

Obnoxious advertisement: my company resells an Arduino-compatible wireless sensor node made by Seeedstudio, http://www.robotmesh.com/seeeduino-stalker-v3 Costs $39.00

Onboard RTC, LiPo charger, temperature sensor, micro SD card socket. Designed to be plugged into a 5 volt solar panel. (Many complaints that the panel Seeed supplies is undersized and degrades quickly in the field, so we don't carry it, so you'd have to source that yourself, or just use a DC wall adapter) Uses XBee-footprint radio modules, sold separately. (We don't carry those either, since Digi got really obnoxious about trademark enforcement)

Unsolicited advice: Use the CHIP as a gateway for a network of devices like the Moteino[1] or JeeNode[2]. I tend to agree with then sentiments re. wifi from this post [3]

[1] http://lowpowerlab.com/moteino/

[2] http://jeelabs.net/projects/hardware/wiki/JeeNode

[3] http://lowpowerlab.com/blog/2015/12/17/esp8266-vs-sub-1-ghz/

I have a friend who has one of these, and he's stopped using it entirely because of unreliability. The WiFi performed poorly (e.g. in same room, on same router, multi-second latency) and the radios seemed to crash to the point of requiring a hard reset after a few days. Another thing he mentioned as an annoyance (that may be fixed now) was that the power state can't be controlled from software (e.g. shutdown -r will hang when it actually tells the hw to power-cycle).

For what it's worth I have 2 and have yet to experience any need to hard reset after roughly a week of being connected to the same network. I've also been able to use shutdown -r without any issue. I used them as beacons to mock up an indoor location app recently an they performed well during all of my testing. YMMV but thats my 2c.

I backed their Kickstarter and I love them.

They have consistently delivered updates to backers and have always been on schedule (they are even ahead of schedule now!). I'm not sure how they do it, but they just solve problems.

Initially, the shipping cost for their Kickstarter was too high ($9 computer + $20 shipping to Europe). They lowered shipping costs (to $14 for me) just before the end of their Kickstarter. Even though I had the expectation of paying $29 to get a C.H.I.P to my door, they let everyone use the difference with what they paid to buy more boards or accessories, so I got two C.H.I.P.s for $32 instead. [1]

They encountered issues with the CPU they planned on using, and had to replace it with a bigger version that didn't fit the front of the board. They had to put it on the back, and added small cases to everyone's orders so the computers could lay flat as expected. [2]

The hardware and software initially had issues for some people. They quickly released a simple flashing tool for Windows, OS X and Linux. For hardware problems, they flat out offered to swap defective C.H.I.P.s. [3]

I've truly appreciated their level of professionalism and their customer support work. The computer in itself is fine, and much more economical than the Raspberry Pi (integrated networking capabilities).

[1] : https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1598272670/chip-the-wor...

[2] : https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1598272670/chip-the-wor...

[3] : https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1598272670/chip-the-wor...

Blame the bad world, if it isn't true, but your post feels a little bit like paid enthusiasm...

I agree with Artemis2. I also backed this project, and it has absolutely been one the most well managed, communicative projects I've supported. I've been very pleased.

Just 9$ for a 1Ghz ARM processor, 512MB of RAM with integrated WiFi and Bluetooth! At prices that cheap I would be super interested in a ultra cheap mobile phone with e-ink display that last several weeks on a single charge.

Solar powered would be a bonus

Well, it does have built-in support for a lithium ion battery, so if you can figure out some way to hook it up to a solar panel...

Though I suspect there'd be practical issues with getting enough energy to keep it charged.

According to people in their forums, the CHIP seems to use around 250-300mAh per hour even when idle, so something like an iPhone 6 battery would only last you a day, if that.

The USB TTY idea is really nice!

Yeah I would really like to see the Raspberry series integrate that feature.

Looks like this is possible now on the Pi Zero (with some kernel tweaks):

https://learn.adafruit.com/turning-your-raspberry-pi-zero-in...

RPi got an SPI interface, which can be used with a standalone FTDI USB-to-SPI.

You don't even need that --- the RPi has got a proper TTL UART. Two, in fact, although as you can only use one at a time that doesn't get you much. Any TTL serial adapter will just plug straight in.

It's brilliant. It's my favorite part about mine - takes the annoyance out of developing on it entirely.

Has anyone priced out the components? How is $9 possible?

You'd be surprised how cheap components are now at volume. The most expensive bits are probably the connectors and the chip.

>Has anyone priced out the components?

Yes. The BOM is well over $9. You could reasonably debate if it's $12, or $20, or $15. But it's not less than $9. Not even with sweetheart deals all around.

Here's the BOM: https://github.com/NextThingCo/CHIP-Hardware/raw/master/CHIP...

The R8 CPU + 4GB NAND FLASH + 512M DDR3 alone would be close to $9. The RTL8723 wifi/bt chip is at least a dollar. The rest is cheap individually, but there's a lot of connectors, resistors, caps, etc. It adds up.

Also, the BOM doesn't include any of the costs for the PCB itself,assembly, the employees, engineering time, etc.

>How is $9 possible?

Loss leader. Make it up in shipping and accessories.

Edit: Don't believe it? Enter your own prices here. I put in "sweetheart deal" prices for the 4 items mentioned above, and assumed $0.01 unit cost for everything else (which is not realistic). That unrealistic approach totals $12.19.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1HPjX9_H2NIkR4l1l34JT...

So, if you're going to claim it's somehow less than $9, clone the spreadsheet, update the prices, and show us how :) Oh, and throw in what you think the bare PCB + assembly costs.

Makes sense. But how can a Kickstarted project be a loss leader? Or are they bootstrapped, and using Kickstarter funds to subsidize loss?

Maybe it'll only be available in a $40 CHIP starter pack, which will include the CHIP, a $3 power supply and $10 of cables and various knick knacks you can play with.

>>how can a Kickstarted project be a loss leader

Looks like some combination of padded shipping prices, plus sales of accessories that appear to actually be priced above cost. (PocketChip, VGA, HDMI, etc).

So, you can pledge for just a $9 CHIP, but they are subsidizing the losses there with the other pledges + shipping margin.

It all depends on volume. You can buy a decent 8" tablet - with screen, battery, case, charger and everything that is on the CHIP - for $50 at retail.

Cut out all those parts and at sufficient volume, $9 seems possible.

That's a very different situation. The no-name tablets were sold all over the world in HUGE volumes, and weren't $50 at the beginning. The initial higher prices covered the sunk costs. The volume for CHIP isn't even in the same universe.

Likely, the tablet used the A33 Allwinner chip. Because of the volume, that would have been a cheaper option than the brand-new R8, but not by much. Maybe $1 less. That still doesn't get you to a < $9 bom.

The R8 isn't exactly new - it's apparently the exact same die as Allwinner's ancient A13 chip, which in turn is a cost-reduced version of their first single-core A10 chip for Android tablets.

Sorry, yes. The R8M was CHIP's original plan, and that is new. The R8, though, is more costly than the A33, when you ask Allwinner directly.

Olimex asked Allwinner directly why, and this was the answer:

"R8 is new IC just published especially on IoT, it is not like A33 this one had used on a large scale forTablet PC. So R8 is more expensive as produced in lower quantities than A33 which is selling for tablets in big volumes."[1]

[1]https://olimex.wordpress.com/2015/06/05/how-to-get-in-the-ne... (bottom of page)

Our condo has an entryphone working over normal phone line. I really wanted for a very long time a simple system which can a) authenticate via HTTPS b) after auth, for a few minutes if someone (like me) rings the phone it would answer the phone c) dials 6 to let me in. There is no dialtone or such involved.

Most solutions I were able to find are ridiculously expensive compared to how simple this ought to be. Now we have an adequately cheap computer ... is there a modem you can drive from the GPIO? Or is that crazy.

You can attach a USB modem to a SBC and go from there, that's probably the simplest way to approach it.

The more complex way is to have an interface/isolation circuit using two GPIO pins (one input for ring detection, one output that switches a relay into the rest of the circuit and also takes the line off the hook). You then have a single DAC or PWM output that plays the tone into the isolation transformer. If you are interested in more info on this sort of thing, contact me.

That's where the "ridiculously expensive" part kicks in: the only modems that mention Linux support are 40+ USD. (Zoom 3095 etc)

There are cheaper options, for example the Trendnet TFM-561U which claims linux support

These $9/shipped generic USB modems worked on Linux for me: http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Adroit-New-USB-56K-V-90-V-92-...

Not great quality, but it sounds like you just want to go off hook and send a single DTMF tone. (ATH1, then ATD6). It should work fine.

Thanks! I will need to figure out how to configure mgetty to do an ATDT6 on dial.

Sure. Looking at mgetty's man page, it looks like you would want to

a) Disable Auto Answer on the modem, manually: ATS0=0

b) Set the "answer-chat" setting in mgetty to send the ATH1 then ATDT6

I imagine you'll also have tons of errors, since no actual modem-to-modem data connection will ever get established in this scenario. So maybe some options to suppress all that.

Is Twilio a non-starter for you? If so, why?

How would Twilio answer the phone located inside his apartment?

Java? Scala? Yes, please. See my slide deck from NEScala at https://goo.gl/2t5hBX

I don't do preorders, but I'd like to pick one of these up if/when they ever become generally available. I guess the storage/bluetooth/wife are worth the extra $4 over the Pi Zero, and the USB TTY be default is handy too.

Gotta love the guy who chimed in with "The worst part of the CHIP is the GPU, which is more than trash."

Phewww! I almost spent a whopping $9 on a tiny computer that cannot process media as well as computers 50x more expensive and 10x as big. I'll just wait until those shrink down and cost the same so I only ever need to buy one computer for all my projects.

Maybe I'm crazy, but I feel like the big inflection point with these single board computers will really come when they have PCI express slots on them.

There's a whole bunch you can do with peripherals and networking over PCIe that would make those chips useful for a new set of situations.

Other than graphics, is there anything available over PCIe that isn't available over USB?

Any sensor activity that is sensitive to inconsistent latency, like a GPS time source. I don't think you'll find any trusted stratum 1 ntp servers using USB for clock sources.

So use GPIO?

For this specific device? Sure, but that wasn't the question that I was answering.

Right, any low-latency low-bandwith application can use GPIO (or in the case of audio, isochronous USB); high-bandwidth non-latency-sensitive applications use USB.

This leaves just latency-sensitive high-bandwith applications, of which the most common is video.

Just because you can do it over USB doesn't mean you should. PCIe gets you more bandwidth and vastly better latency, and the peripherals that use PCIe tend to be higher quality and have better drivers than their USB competition. Just compare any USB NIC against Intel Ethernet or Atheros WiFi, or NVMe and AHCI devices against the mess that is UASP. You can't build a decent router or NAS around USB devices.

(And DisplayLink offers graphics over USB, but it's so bad that in almost any other context it should be regarded as not counting.)

DisplayLink has a large number of customers, so obviously it works well enough for a lot of use-cases. I've used it for status displays, and the additional monitors that most engineers like to have. I can't even remember which one of the two monitors in my home office is DisplayLink. I'd imagine that I'd notice if I tried to play a game...

On quite a few of these devices, some of the 'on board' connectors are running over USB as well, so they'll never perform even though they're soldered.

TCP/IP over PCIe is a hell of a lot faster than USB, for one. Peripheral management is better as well.

The cost of the PCIe connector starts to be significant then, and even the X1 kind are comparatively huge.

Almost every one of these devices has 3 connectors I'd never use. One PCIe connector would be smaller, especially at X1, and X4 is probably a wash.

Maybe not the same 3 you wouldn't use, but that's part of the 'be all things to all people' problem.

I think it all depends on the use case.

For example an IOT device probably doesn't need PCIE as it would be more focused on sensors, power consumption, ultra low BOM, etc.

But in the mid - high end embedded space PCIE is already taking over. WiFi chips are switching from SDIO interfaces -> PCIE (finally!), storage is shifting from eMMC -> NVMe (uses PCIE), NICs have been PCIE for a long time, multi board designs are using PCIE b/w boards, etc.

For the higher end embedded systems that need the latency and throughput PCIE is king.

Those are compelling. I am lusting after the wire friendly gpio mounts from the picture, too.

I ordered mine last year. It was the first purchase I ever made on kickstarter. I went with the VGA adapter, but it seems everything is HDMI these days. Everything is still back ordered, but I am excited to see what this system can do.

Looks very interesting, too bad they don't accept paypal

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