I was one of the C.H.I.P. kickstarter backers. I actually have two. I've been quite pleased with them. Apart from the issue with early C.H.I.P.s not booting[1], I've been had very few issues with mine.
I really like the idea of these small, cheap, hackable and ubiquitous computers that we can assign to a project and not worry about the cost. One issue with the multitude of different companies making these things (Raspberry Pi, Beagleboard, Next Thing, etc.) is that some systems garner large communities (and subsequently lots of support) whilst others seem to remain small. Most of my endeavours with these computers has been software related but I imagine that the size of the community comes into effect when it comes to hardware support. Is there something that can be done do try to minimize this difference?
Open drivers, open documentation. Trying to work with these cheap SoCs is like pulling teeth, because their manufacturers are completely indifferent to the open source community. Video drivers are a particular sticking point.
They're working on it. The company behind C.H.I.P seems to be paying someone to develop drivers for it and get them into upstream Linux, including non-accelerated video drivers. A lot of the hardware on this era of Allwinner SoC actually already has support thanks to community efforts, too.
> veneer, plastics, and MDF rule the day when it comes to speaker materials
There's a reason for this. It's because MDF gives far more consistent sound properties, not only between speakers, but within parts of the speaker box. MDF is about as uniform as you can get timber.
The user interface on that LePai amp appears to be rather lacking though - it's apparently limited to a numeric LED display and an IR remote that lets you skip through one song at a time. Probably not much fun with a large collection.
Since the CHIP is similar to other single chip SOC platforms like the Raspberry Pi, beagle bone, etc, the use cases are very similar. The CHIP has the advantage of being smaller in size than the other small cpu's but also much cheaper.
It's only much cheaper if you get it without any of the adapters. I Kickstarted it and paid $24 for one w/ an HDMI adapter and $19 for one w/ a VGA. That being said, now that I have both adapters, any proceeding purchases go back to being much cheaper if I don't need the display adapters full time.
The thing that really got me was their aim of being entirely open source. I like the Pi, but there's a lot of stuff closed off.
It's also cheap to go from HDMI to VGA now, a "Ugreen" HDMI to VGA converter (with 3.5mm audio out) is about $8.50.
I think the popularity of the Pi has helped there.
(The adapters are great, but depending on what you're plugging in, you may need to supply power as well. A microUSB cable is included in the box. If what you want to display has HDCP, that needs to be removed before the adapter.)
I really like the idea of these small, cheap, hackable and ubiquitous computers that we can assign to a project and not worry about the cost. One issue with the multitude of different companies making these things (Raspberry Pi, Beagleboard, Next Thing, etc.) is that some systems garner large communities (and subsequently lots of support) whilst others seem to remain small. Most of my endeavours with these computers has been software related but I imagine that the size of the community comes into effect when it comes to hardware support. Is there something that can be done do try to minimize this difference?
[1] https://bbs.nextthing.co/t/c-h-i-p-boot-repair-tool-for-mac/... (that site was having issues with its CSS at the time of posting)