CHIP $9 Computer

More like the $15.22 computer with shipping. And said shipping cost is hidden at the third stage of ordering, well after you&#x27;ve given your email (hello dark pattern).<p>At least the $6.22 shipping cost to my European country is reasonable and the same for two CHIPs (3: $7, 4: $9, 5: $11). I recall it was much higher during the kickstarter (and they worked to reduce it, as it seems on the campaign page).<p><i>Edit</i>: PockeCHIP shipping is $11

By being&#x2F;attempting to be the &quot;low cost leader&quot; really brings out the worst people in comments. People who complain about shipping and packaging and the price on other sites and the price of other products, on and on and on. You couldn&#x27;t pay me to be in such a market I feel bad for those who provide a cheap service or product and then get the worst feedback one could get.

Can&#x27;t remember whether I&#x27;ve seen this before. A few details after reading through some of the docs:<p><pre><code> * powered by Allwinner R8 (ARM Cortex-A8) with some proprietary bits * Debian-based CHIP O&#x2F;S preinstalled on 4 GB flash * one micro USB port for power (supports USB OTG if powered by battery) * power connector for battery * one USB 2.0 port * one TRRS port for audio and composite video * built-in WiFi and Bluetooth * VGA adapter available for $10 * HDMI adapter available for $15 (no audio) * case available for $2</code></pre>

It&#x27;s interesting that they distribute the &quot;CHIP Flasher&quot; as a Chrome app. It seems very user friendly but somewhat opaque. And it&#x27;s a pity there&#x27;s not much info on the hardware.<p>Anyway, I&#x27;ve ordered two pieces. They&#x27;re probably going to gather dust alongside my Raspberry Pis and Arduinos once the initial excitement has worn off. :)<p>[EDIT] OK there&#x27;s lots of info on the hardware, just not easy to find on their sales page: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;NextThingCo&#x2F;CHIP-Hardware&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;NextThingCo&#x2F;CHIP-Hardware&#x2F;</a>

I&#x27;m having a hard time finding a reason why I would buy this over the Raspberry Pi. Like others have said for this to be useful as a general purpose computer you need to buy add-on boards for video. Compare that to the RPi Zero which is $5 bucks and includes an HDMI port. You can easily add a USB ethernet or wifi adapter to the zero for under 4 bucks and have a real $9 computer.<p>Not to mention the CHIP uses an AllWinner processor which has a record of not playing well with open source and a history of security issues.

Why is HDMI adapter worth $15? It&#x27;s like create a hardware and split expensive parts and sell with low price marketing. It&#x27;s not $9 computer, It&#x27;s actually ~$35

I was an early Kickstarter backer and got mine right around the beginning of 2016. For me the sweet spot was small size, and WiFi. Note this was before The RPi3 was announced with onboard Wifi. CHIP had an early issue with flash corruption (no surprise there are always some issues with v1 hardware) but seem to have that sorted out with a firmware fix and mine has been running without issue for weeks.<p>Compared to the original RPi which required an $11 WiFi USB dongle and a powered USB hub this is a lot simpler. I primarily used it as a headless sensor node or wireless&#x2F;networked LCD display. It&#x27;s perfect for that and still one of the lower-cost options even after shipping $$.<p>Their documentation (<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.getchip.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.getchip.com&#x2F;</a>) and forum are actually pretty great. I think this will be a good contender if&#x2F; when they reach general availability.

I&#x27;ve been waiting for the PocketCHIP to become reality before ordering anything. It looks like they&#x27;re planning to ship this month, so it might be time to order.<p>I love that it includes a game dev kit that includes a music tracker...that&#x27;s what I want it for. I have an original GameBoy for making music with LSDJ, and it&#x27;s a lot of fun. But, it is difficult to find good condition GameBoys for anything approaching a reasonable price these days. I&#x27;d love to have something a bit more modern with the same basic feel and sound.<p>The PocketCHIP has the advantage of having a &quot;real&quot; computer inside and a QWERTY keyboard, so if I get bored with four note polyphony, I could run something like SchismTracker or SunVox or whatever. It is in the sweet spot for me for this kind of device, in a way that the Raspberry Pi hasn&#x27;t been (though the Pi is cool, too).

Still waiting for the CHIPs i ordered several months ago :&#x2F;

I&#x27;m stoked for the PocketCHIP.

The chip has been on HN on and off for months. Is there something new happening?

This is amazing. Just need to figure out how I can attach a battery to it and everything in my house will be a computer.

I&#x27;d prefer such product if I can just power it and control it over SSH. I don&#x27;t really need an actual screen plug, as I would not use a home screen on such a tiny thing: it doesn&#x27;t make sense.<p>Although the rasbperry pi zero seems interesting, I don&#x27;t know if I can plug a minimalist, small and cheap screen on a mini-hdmi. Overall there is no point using a classic screen on such tiny devices.<p>This seems to compete with the raspberry pi zero, and RPi zero doesn&#x27;t have wifi.

Would be helpful if they were more transparent about shipping. I&#x27;m not going to go through the motions of pre-ordering just to find out what the total costs are.

I bought one for June delivery, hopefully it shows up.<p>What bums me out is that there is no easy board that I can find of the (get chip, pi zero ilk) that comes with an ethernet port. I know I can get a regular Pi but it&#x27;s too much for my use case.<p>On a related note, I&#x27;ve been looking for a low cost smart power plug with ethernet (10&#x2F;100&#x2F;1000) without much success. If anyone knows of such a beast, please let me know.<p>IMO, $80 for something like this <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;ezOutlet-Internet-IP-Enabled-Android-Interface&#x2F;dp&#x2F;B00KQ4R1RK&#x2F;ref=pd_sim_23_1?ie=UTF8&amp;dpID=41LIb75CyNL&amp;dpSrc=sims&amp;preST=_AC_UL160_SR160%2C160_&amp;refRID=WD0CR2WX3Q6NYFV37YRC" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;ezOutlet-Internet-IP-Enabled-Android-...</a> is too much

Did they really use a banana for scale?

I made a group order for 40 CHIP computers. I was definitely pissed off by the fact that I could only order five of them at the time (but there was no limit on the number of order I could place).<p>I am looking forward for them to start delivering.<p>I hope that VAT won&#x27;t be too high.

Does anyone know if one of the USB slots can act as a client while the other as a host? I can&#x27;t seem to find any documentation with that level of detail.<p>edit: looks like one of them can run in OTG mode (i.e client), that&#x27;s wonderful!

Anyone know what is that vertical scroll shmup on the image above the gaming header?

I still can&#x27;t see a full spec for the soc. Without that, <i>to me</i>, this is uninteresting. Sorry. Perhaps others have different priorities. Having a fully hackable $9 computer would have been a wonderful thing to me.

A big market for these that doesn&#x27;t seem to be mentioned is the potential for business presentation use: sales, training, basically anything in an office.<p>Why carry a laptop, when the location you&#x27;re going to has a projector screen you&#x27;ll use, and likely has a keyboard (or carry a portable input device), and a power supply. And your files are cached on your favourite cloud.<p>Make a nice looking case for these, and they&#x27;re impressive novelties, lighter than the lightest laptop, and probably a bit more stable than driving a projector from a phone.

I ordered a CHIP over a year ago with the VGA adapter. I think it should be shipping soon. I sort of now wish I had went with the HDMI adapter as I do not have too many VGA systems these days.

I ordered these the day they announced. Not sure if mine have shipped yet. Excited to see them.

I ordered mine in November, when are they actually planning on shipping?

It&#x27;s a bit frustrating there is no easy way to change the shipping address after the preorder.

Can I start using CHIP without a display? Like ssh access when connected to USB or via Bluetooth?

Do they keep costs down because they are using conflict minerals? <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;enoughproject.org&#x2F;special-topics&#x2F;progress-and-challenges-conflict-minerals-facts-dodd-frank-1502" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;enoughproject.org&#x2F;special-topics&#x2F;progress-and-challen...</a>

I ordered one. With tax and shipping to Northern California, it was over $16.

Is it shipping soon ?

where to get time to play with all the toys....

CHIP&#x27;s $9 pitch is nothing special anymore, with that Rpi device for $5 now, but the PocketCHIP wrapper is still a strong USP. Here is an IoT device where you don&#x27;t need a soldering iron to actually get basic, useful stuff going.

Impressive hardware, but UGH!, not yet-another-Linux powered computer! If I had the time, I&#x27;d port illumos to it myself, but since I don&#x27;t, Linux on this thing makes it a non-starter for me.