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Next thing co releases world s first 9 computer
Next Thing Co. is an Oakland, California based start-up company founded in 2013 by Dave Rauchwerk, Gustavo Huber and Thomas Deckert, and known for its miniature computer, CHIP.
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CHIP computer
Announced in May 2015, CHIP is a Linux development board marketed as a miniature computer, costing for $9 for early Kickstarter backers (+shipping cost of 5-25 USD). NTC has confirmed that after Kickstarter campaign the price will continue to be $9, despite speculation from competitors that the price will go up. Alpha versions (version 0.21) of the computer were based on variant of AllWinner's R8M module (priced around $16 by manufacturer according to a competitor's reports), while the final version is based on the related AllWinner R8. The CHIP computer measures 40mm/1.5" by 60mm/2.3", has a 1 GHz processor, 512MB of RAM, and 4GB of storage, WiFi and Bluetooth. It can connect wirelessly to a keyboard, and to any computer screen via a composite output. It also has USB and micro-USB ports, and runs on the Debian GNU/Linux operating system. Next Thing announced the product via a Kickstarter campaign, asking for $50,000. The campaign had raised over $1.5m before 21 May 2015, with over 29,000 backers. It was successfully funded for $2,071,927 on 6 June 2015.
On 30 Nov 2015, NextThing Co. announced changing from the original R8M module to the R8 module, this is the one that is available in the 1.0 release. Also instead of the CPU being placed on the front it is now instead placed on the back. In January 2016, it announced on its website that preorders are estimated to be shipped in June 2016.
All claimed preorders have been claimed and shipped as of June 2016.
Comparison of C.H.I.P. to Raspberry Pi
One advantage of the C.H.I.P is that it is open hardware, whereas some of the Raspberry Pi hardware is closed source.
The C.H.I.P comes with built in WiFi and Bluetooth, whereas some of the Raspberry Pi requires external WiFi and Bluetooth accessories to be purchased. It is however important to note that the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B (US$35) does include built in WiFi and Bluetooth, as does the Raspberry Pi Zero W (priced at US$9).
There is a screen and keyboard accessory available for purchase on the Next Thing Co website. Raspberry Pi has several LCD accessories available on the market.
PocketCHIP
The screen and keyboard accessory is called the PocketCHIP. PocketCHIP makes CHIP portable, adding a 4.3" 480x272 resistive touchscreen, a clicky keyboard, GPIO headers on the top of the device, and GPIO soldering pads inside of the injection mold case. PocketCHIP comes loaded with a couple of applications like a special version of Pico-8, a fully functional Linux terminal, a file browser, a terminal based web browser called surf, and Sunvox.