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'My Name is C.H.I.P. and I'll Be Your $9 Computer Today' (Video)
Think of C.H.I.P as a tablet computer that runs Linux instead of Android, "without the tablet bits," says interviewee Dave, who gave a talk -- which was mostly live demos -- at OSCON 2015. 50,000 C.H.I.P.s have already sold for $9 through their successful Kickstarter campaign, and Next Thing Co. plans to stick with the $9 price for the foreseeable future -- plus add-on boards (that they call "shields") they hope to sell you, but that won't flatten any but the skinniest wallets; given the projected price scale, you'll have trouble spending as much as $50 for a fully-accessorized C.H.I.P. unit.
"But," you may ask, "is C.H.I.P. Open Source?" You bet! No hedging here, just flat-out Open Source, from the bottom to the top, with all software (and hardware specs) freely available via GitHub. And lastly, the "I'll Be Your $9 Computer Today' statement in the headline above is allegorical, not factual. We've seen projected shipping dates for C.H.I.P ranging from "by the end of 2015" to a simple "2016." Either way, we're waiting with bated breath.
"But," you may ask, "is C.H.I.P. Open Source?" You bet! No hedging here, just flat-out Open Source, from the bottom to the top, with all software (and hardware specs) freely available via GitHub. And lastly, the "I'll Be Your $9 Computer Today' statement in the headline above is allegorical, not factual. We've seen projected shipping dates for C.H.I.P ranging from "by the end of 2015" to a simple "2016." Either way, we're waiting with bated breath.
I just read the Kickstarter page, and if they actually deliver on what they're saying this thing is, it's actually way more useful and interesting to most people than the raspi. "The world's first $9 computer" sounds idiotic at first, because you know better, but it actually is the world's first $9 "what most people think of when you say 'computer' that is actually end-luser functional out of the box." Describing it as a tablet without the tablet stuff is weird; it's more like a desktop from several years ago, only it goes in your pocket instead of being comparatively stupid huge and ungainly netbook. It's got a bunch of different ways to connect to various input and output, so you pretty much just throw it on a desk wherever you happen to be and just go to town.
Of course, this is massively unlikely to have the impact it deserves. Everyone's already got smartphones, which we already spent way more on and are prettier, even though you have to do all kinds of dumb shit to them to give them functionality as flexible as this thing does. It's mostly interesting if you imagine it as something they pulled out of an alternate history. Like, if things had been just a little more like cyberpunk than they already are, maybe your mom would've given you one of these when you were ten and people on your decker forum would make fun of you for using it.