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$9 Open Source Computer Blows Past Crowdfunding Goal
An anonymous reader writes: A team of engineers and artists has launched a Kickstarter campaign for C.H.I.P., a small computer that costs $9. The campaign met and far exceeded its $50,000 goal on the first day. The device runs an R8 ARM CPU clocked at 1 GHz, 512 MB of RAM, and 4GB of storage. It has built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, and runs a version of Debian. The price was enabled by two things: super-cheap Chinese tablets pushing down processor costs, and support from manufacturer Allwinner to make it even cheaper. The team is also building breakout boards for VGA and HDMI connections, as well as one with a tiny LCD screen, keyboard, and battery. Importantly, "all hardware design files schematic, PCB layout and bill of materials are free for you the community to download, modify and use."
$9 is too much. 7's the key number here. Think about it. 7-Elevens. 7 dwarves. 7, man, that's the number. 7 chipmunks twirlin' on a branch, eatin' lots of sunflowers on my uncle's ranch. You know that old children's tale from the sea. It's like you're dreamin' about Gorgonzola cheese when it's clearly Brie time, baby. Step into my office.
When I think about how much more power this has than my old Commodore 64, and how much cheaper it is (whether you take inflation into account or not!), it is just awesome. Mind blown.
That is too far out. Technology will have moved on by then.
This is pretty amazing if they can actually sell those for $9. Definitely one of the better kickstarters I've seen recently, so I am glad to see its successful.
However, once you add the HDMI, it's essentially the same price as a raspberry pi model A.
No 8 minute abs. You can't get abs in 7 minutes. Don't be rediculous.
Does that price include a power adapter, wifi adapter, and case? If so I might buy it an use those parts for my Rasberry Pi. If not then those will cost more than the "computer".
So this thing is basically a cheaper Rasberry PI without all the I/O features?
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
$9 with $20 shipping is an old ebay scam, but evidently still effective
Ok you got the parts cheap.
Then you need to put it together.
Then you need to package it.
Then you need to advertise it.
Then you need to ship it.
You have to pay taxes on your profit.
You need to pay for the people managing this process.
If there is a failure rate you will have returns that you need to refund.
All in all you are probably up to $30-$40 for a unit. This is still a good price, but it is comparable to a Raspberry Pi.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The first thing I thought when I saw this is someone knocked down the price of a tablet .. but when I click through what I see is a mainboard looking like a Raspberry Pii and not much else. .. WooHoo $9 for that? well what does it give you? Not very much. You still need a Keyboard & Mouse, Monitor or TV It doesn't even have video out you have to get an adapter for that.. ...
.
I just picked up three iCraig Android TV Sticks.. they come with 1.5G Ram 4Gig Rom .. they run full android.. they can be rooted and flashed.. they have HDMI Out They have Wifi.. They have a USB Port .. They have a MicroSD Slot to expand to 32Gig for storage. Android is already installed so you can quickly connect to the internet, You can install Office Apps, Games, Utilities You can print over WiFi Bluetooth or USB .. You also have access to TV Content sites like Netflix, Hulu, LiveStreams of TV News from hundreds of Local Stations, Music.. and if thats not enough you can install Kodi.tv and mine came installed with it.. You can connect to Local USB Drives or shares over a network.. You can install a Cloud Storage App or just use Google's...
.
Who needs this garbage mainboard with no features when I can go to the store and buy an android stick for $12.95 and turn all my TVs into Computers without having to deal with garbage daughter boards or OS's that aren't as full featured.. PlugNPlay Ready..
.
And there is no Learning Curve .. its just like your phone but better....
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NAH... too little too late whoever gives them money could spend $12 on a Android Stick and be farther ahead and up and running in 10 minutes
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these.
It's not enough RAM. Having used a B+, it's totally not enough RAM for the stuff they're saying you can do with it.
I love the Pocket Chip flavor - already pledget for two piece set. I was looking for something similar for Raspi but couldn't find any decent enclosure with integrated input, display and battery in slick case. Also integated wifi and bluetooth are very nice.
The $9 basic board comes without any display port but the modular aproach in which you can add VGA or HDMI via addon board is IMHO better than all-in-one Raspi - the board is cheaper that way and you can own only one display adapter and use it in multiple headless projects.
Is that right? $29 for a $9 computer?
OK, so it's a $30 board. The problem is $79 get's you a Windows 8.1 x86 tablet.
And of course there's the GPL... "oversights" that didn't get corrected after asking.
Has wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame.
I would love one but it's $20 shipping to the UK and there doesn't seem to be any obvious way to combine. (I can't believe I had to log in to see the shipping cost, they should make that very obvious on the front KS page.
Also, you should note that the initial fulfillment schedule is aiming for this time next year.
Said it roughly 15 years ago already here on slashdot:
We're smack in the middle of a transition to a post-scarcity cyberpunk society. A throw-away end-user PC for 9$ is basically exactly that.
Computers aren't the deal anymore. Who can operate them, how do I connect x to y to z and how do I migrate data from a to b - that's what this is all about. I can hardly be bothered to replace my 4.5 year old HTC Desire HD Smartphone because it's already basically a supercomputer in my pocket. With a replacable battery - which most of todays smartphones don't have.
The fact that I would like a bigger screen and that the browser with Android 2.3 Gingerbread is starting to have problems with todays website might actually just get me to do it. I would love to have a convergence device though - one that can act as my desktop as soon as I plug it into its cradle. ... Maybe I should really wait for that new Ubuntu phone to come out ...
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
No thanks, I don't want SystemD in my house.
https://linux-sunxi.org/GPL_Violations
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Allwinner-GPL-Violate-Proof
why are we enabling them and encouraging them?
From the Q&A:
So I'll believe it when I can download it.
...Past Crowdfunding Goal.
A lesson in title-making.
"Importantly, "all hardware design files schematic, PCB layout and bill of materials are free for you the community to download, modify and use."
I guess you people have never heard of Allwinner, a fairly serial GPL violator. They're also pretty hostile towards the OSS community.
No Linux device tree that I can tell, which means no support for shit.
Oh, also - $9 computer with $20 shipping cost? That's the oldest eBay scam in the book. That thing only weighs a couple of ounces at most - $5 maximum even WITH insurance.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I know it's an Allwinner A13 which uses the Cortex-A8 architecture, can't they even try to get the basic facts right?
I went to the Kickstarter page with the intent of buying one. But then I found that shipping the $9 board to anywhere except the US starts at $20. So the price just tripled !
So it looks like I'll wait until I can order it directly from china, with no detour through the US, with free shipping.
Let's add it up, shall we?
$9 for the board
$15 for the HDMI board so you can actually hook it up to a monitor
$20 shipping
Total: $44
At that point you're better off getting a Pi. More performance, more support/accessories, more ports, more everything.
Clearly, the cost of computing isn't in the chips or the PCB design. It's in the device enclosures. Tooling costs for nice enclosures are expensive even if you do have them made in China and 3D printing isn't quite mature enough to make short-run production-quality parts.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
So how long will this el cheapo thing last? There's a reason I don't buy el cheapo thumb drives - they go bad almost instantly.
Not sure why you're harboring a special grudge against Allwinner, when virtually all the SoC manufacturers in China are identical in that respect.
What it comes down to is a difference in cultures. Companies like Allwinner have no interest in complete solutions, but merely design and produce the ARM SoCs that are most likely to sell to ARM-based gadget manufacturers. A consequence of this is that software is just a burden to their hardware business and so they spend as little time on it as possible.
What's more, copyrights and licenses have very little relevance in the Chinese culture, it's regarded as "a western thing". And who are we to argue when it's completely normal in the West to ignore the copyrights and licenses on music and films in exactly the same way.
Also, the Chinese SoC manufacturers document very little, and even less in English. Well why should they? How many Western companies translate their documentation into Chinese? When you add that to the fact that they're not producing end-user solutions anyway, and that most of their SoCs are sold to local Chinese manufacturers just across the road, it's pretty clear why things are as they are. We still benefit from it though, because it's their lack of such preoccupations that gives us such cheap gear.
What's more, Allwinner can't fully document nor open source the MALI GPU drivers because ARM Holdings doesn't given them the right to do so. And ARM is a Western company, so perhaps you should blame someone closer to home.
Finally, if you want support for Allwinner chips but you don't speak Chinese then the place you should be looking is linux-sunxi.org .
Oh and good luck having hissifits about the Chinese view of copyright, a classic "first-world problem". They might even be acting more sensibly about this "imaginary property" stuff than we are, who knows. History will tell.
The comments section for their camera project don't look very positive. It was supposed to ship mid-January, but it seems they ran into issues.
As of two days ago backer #34 noted that they still haven't gotten their unit, and in their twitter they state that they're only just starting to ship on May 2.
We'll see. It does look like they're launching another project so quickly because they're not actually making money on anything other than "concept."
What's Dice's cut?
2 sets of 2x20 GPIO? That is what, 54 IO pins total? Good computing power and that many inputs/outputs gives this a huge potential for hobby projects that can scale up to businesses. At $9 a piece that is amazing. I can think of excuses to buy at least 20 of these.
runs a version of Debian.
What does that mean? From the official Debian wiki:
Porting to new platforms
Unlike x86, each and every arm platform boots in a slightly different way. Thus, most of work of getting Debian running will involve dealing with bootloader and Kernel. Which is not really debian-specific work. After that, people can start working porting debian-installer for the system in question.
Something tells me that we have another weirdo ARM board with its own "Debian" distro, joining the disarray ranks of dozen others: poorly supported, barely maintained, and soon forgotten.
Considering the total amount of effort invested (and wasted) by developers into building the custom distros, I'm surprised (and disappointed) that nobody has actually stepped up, organized and standardized booting/etc on the ARM SoC yet. (IMO ARM Ltd itself should have done that a decade ago, since IMO it is one of the major roadblocks to the broader adoption of the ARM.)
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
actually no
7 were for dwarf lords in their halls of stone
this $9 is for mortal men doomed to die
in the land of silicon where transistors lie
In defense of the calculator - it has an included screen, dedicated custom keyboard, custom slim case, battery life measured in months if not years, etc.
In non-defense of the calculator - most of its cost is not in the above, but in its certification for use in [school / university / industry] - even if not for itself, then its sibling product which is.. and when that product costs $NN, you can't very well start selling this one for $N without people cluing in.
down with the calculators of defense! it's time we end the mathematical industrial complex! they've been selling children-- children! overpriced calculators running on gameboy processors for 20 years! why can't the children just have a happy childhood? why do we have to repackage the gameboy into a torture device?
I'll soon be creating a Kickstarter to fund the creation of a crowd-sourced funding system. Stay tuned!
Chip is near reality. There is a working prototype
I'll believe the $9 price tag after they actually go to market.
If this had a cell reciever/transmitter I'd be sold. Of course, it'd then be $400 for no apparently logical reason.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
I wonder how long before someone designs/prints a stackable case, so one can wrap a machine in a case, with each shield adding a ring layer to the case.
That's truly all over Arduino's territory price-wise, it's hard to knock off even a chipduino cheaper than that. If you need more horsepower and/or wireless with your GPIO, it seems kind of a no-brainer.
How much hardware is on the VGA breakout? Does it actually have caps and whatnot on it or could you replicate it with just some jumper wires and a through-hole VGA connector?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I'd love a portable little OpenBSD machine. I wonder how standard the hardware will be?
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
You might not even need a power adapter. The price on this compares favorably to an Arduino, so I might use it where I would have previously used and Arduino. My Arduino projects have never needed a power adapter because they've always borrowed power from whatever they were connected to.
Are you all nuts? This is an incredible price performance point. Yet all I see is nit picking: it can't do this, it doesn't run that, the "real' price is X (what about SHIPPING!!!), the Raspberry Pi is the same only better, etc. What the hell do you expect for $9? A cold six pack and a back massage?
Speaking of the R Pi, if you go back and look at the responses to those announcements, you see the same kind of mindless bitching. The complaints are similar: t doesn't do enough, It's overpriced for what it does, it should be cheaper, more things should be optional, etc. Pretty much the same crap. Yet here the R Pi is the gold standard, and this board sucks. Make up you damned minds.
No matter what anybody comes up with, it's wrong. Have any of the legions of critics done anything even remotely like this? Of course not. They're all just sitting in their parents basement sniping at people who get stuff done. It sounds bunch of pathetic losers who knock everyone else down so they can try and feel superior. It's a disgusting display.
Why is Snark Required?