
CHIP Pro - throwaway000002
https://nextthing.co/pages/chippro
======
platz
I have the chip, esp8266, rpi, teensies, trinkets, arduinos... I studied
electronics principles and built various circuits.. yet I have no idea what I
can practically use these devices for in my life. They all sit in a box and I
have a hard time justifying buying more of them.

~~~
IgorPartola
Raspberry Pis and CHIPs: good for a home automation hub of sorts or a thing
where you want a portable computer capable of working with video, audio, or
large volumes of data.

Arduino et al: need to have buttons do more complicated things than buttons
can actually do: slowly change light colors, actuate things, CNC, etc.

ESP8266: sensors and remote controls for switches and such. Anything Arduino
does above, except the button is now on a network and not necessarily
physical.

I have the same problem, but at the same time I have found some use cases. For
example an Arduino to remember the height settings for my sitting/standing
desk project. Or an ESP8266-based garage door opener on the cheap.

I do think that a lot of the not-Arduino hardware a la teensy is not really
that relevant to me. I don't want to study hardware. I want to build shit, and
in most cases a Wemos D1 Mini is actually what I need. But there are cases
where things like that can be really nice. The MSP430 for example is a really
low power chip.

Basically if you don't know what to do with the stuff, donate it to a local
hackerspace. Or find a project idea, then dig into the box-o-stuff.

~~~
rxseger
+1 for using Raspberry Pi for home automation.

I'm just getting into electronics but have found the Pi indispensable for this
purpose: without much effort, I now have Pi Zero running Homebridge with
plugins and hardware to control an AC power outlet switch, ambient temperature
and humidity sensors, three contact sensors, and another Raspberry Pi 3 also
running Homebridge with a light sensor, fan speed controller (PWM) /
tachometer, motion detector, and camera.

What's great about the Raspberry Pi is it is a complete computer system, so it
can run the Homebridge stack (Node.js, mDNS, etc.) for bridging your custom
home automation devices (via GPIO) to the rest of your IoT system (I wrote up
my experiences here if anyone is interested:
[https://medium.com/@rxseger/home-automation-with-
raspberry-p...](https://medium.com/@rxseger/home-automation-with-raspberry-pi-
homebridge-f5ad9c4942c5) Home automation with Raspberry Pi + Homebridge).

However, having a full OS is probably overkill for most home automation
sensors/devices, I'm looking into getting an ESP8266 or other low-power
wireless microcontroller next as I continue to build out my automation to
other parts of the home. An ESP8266 may be better than e.g. a Pi Zero for many
of these use cases, having built-in Wi-Fi support versus an add-on USB Wi-Fi
adapter. I also want to put an MSP430 to work on home automation, but need to
figure out the wireless story. Instead of a heavyweight Wi-Fi stack, probably
a lightweight low-data rate protocol on an unlicensed sub-1 GHz or ISM band,
bridging the slower RF connection to the rest of your Wi-Fi or Ethernet
network (ala ZigBee/802.15.4 and the Philips Hue bridge).

The Wemos D1 Mini (~$5) looks really nice for an ESP8266 board. I went with a
NodeMcu on Aliexpress (~$3), hopefully it works well once it arrives, but at
these prices not much to lose, and you can buy many for multiple projects: a
computer in every room?! Exciting times, more and more companies are
developing expensive home automation products to build an ultimate "smart
home", but with the explosion of inexpensive single-board
computers/microcontrollers for electronics hobbyists there has never been a
better time to get into DIY home automation.

~~~
detaro
I wish there was something ESP8266 like with Ethernet, ideally even with PoE.
WiFi is ok, but since I need a cable for power anyways it could carry the data
just as well...

(and WLAN spectrum is quite cramped here, and part of me wants to isolate
everything into nice separate networks, just to be sure)

~~~
ZenoArrow
> "I wish there was something ESP8266 like with Ethernet"

Perhaps you'll find this useful:

[http://hackaday.com/2016/04/01/ethernet-controller-
discovere...](http://hackaday.com/2016/04/01/ethernet-controller-discovered-
in-the-esp8266/)

~~~
seanp2k2
You can also do real Ethernet with a teensy:
[https://www.pjrc.com/teensy/td_libs_Ethernet.html](https://www.pjrc.com/teensy/td_libs_Ethernet.html)

~~~
ZenoArrow
Thanks for that, I like the compactness of the Teensy solution. If we're going
with shields it's probably worth mentioning that the Arduino also has one:

[https://www.arduino.cc/en/Main/ArduinoEthernetShield](https://www.arduino.cc/en/Main/ArduinoEthernetShield)

------
gbajson
Considering the fact that they missed delivery date of the previous one by at
least 150% (I am still waiting) announcing new one with "Available Dec 2016"
sounds like tasteless joke.

~~~
aquarin
My CHIP still not delivered. They re-scheduled 3 times the delivery. The last
was 3 Oct. Today I received the "happy" news this will be shipped at the
beginning of Nov. The initial shipment was June when I ordered in March.

~~~
RBerenguel
I ordered a TextBlade (small-form factor bluetooth keyboard with pretty nifty
technology) on March 2015 for delivery on June 2015 (not a Kickstarter, mind
you) and I'm still waiting (actually all purchasers are, except for a beta
testing group).

~~~
afandian
I was thinking of buying one recently but couldn't find any reviews on YouTube
which seemed suspect. Do you expect to ever get it?

~~~
MaggieL
I have one Chip and one PocketChip as a backer; my lifepartner has another
PocketChip. Last February I preordered five Chips (the max) and another
PocketChip. My understanding is that it's actually the PocketChip that holding
up shipping my order.

If you're interested in activity from users,
[https://bbs.nextthing.co/](https://bbs.nextthing.co/) is the place to go.

I did a presso at a Scala conference back in February about using Scala on
Chip, you can view the deck here:

[https://goo.gl/2t5hBX](https://goo.gl/2t5hBX)

I was an early order of TextBlade too, cancelled after waiting a year for a
device that was supposed to be in production and ready to ship. I got tired of
letting people hold my money who wouldn't tell me the truth. The TextBlade
forum is now being purged of anybody who complains; having originally created
a "Rants" section, ranting is no loner allowed. For uncensored information, go
to the TextBlade Reddit.

The TextBade mobile app, required for firmware updates and adavanced keyboard
mapping has been in the iOS app store since last December (it's needed to be a
beta user). Only mock-ups (at best; the video could well be fake) of the
Android app have been shown; previously WayTools said they would not begin
development on Android until after they started shipping product. They basic
attitude has been that they don't give a crap about Android users but like
their money.

~~~
RBerenguel
Oh, is that you Maggie from the forum? I'm still vaguely able to complain
there, or so it seems, but I still keep it low key. I also cancelled after a
year, but then reordered when the beta testing thing started, since it seemed
kind of imminent to get one. How wrong I was.

Checking your Scala on Chip deck, I'm pretty deep down the Scala rabbit hole
since a couple of months ago.

------
andycjw
I order the original CHIP at end of May, and I still haven't received it
today, it was supposed to ship by June. They kept getting delayed. Latest
update is that the shipping is for November. Can't help but suspect they are
doing this on purpose to wait for price drop on the components to sustain the
business.

~~~
greglindahl
I was a part of the Kickstarter, got mine roughly when promised.

If you've ever been involved in electronics manufacturing in moderate volumes,
it usually ends up being more episodic than planned.

------
mgleason_3
"Powered by a chip you can actually buy" \- lets hope so.

Assuming thats a reference to the rpi Zero which, as of November, has been out
a full year and still must be bought one at a time. Seems like we'll never be
able to build more than one or two of something based on the zero.

Do wish nextthing would rebrand it because its impossible to Google "chip" and
hope to find anything related to this. How about "NESOC" \- pronounced "knee
sock" and short for nextthing SOC?

~~~
utopcell
c.h.i.p. is probably not that great of a name, but 'getchip' always returns
the relevant information for me. I do like the "white-label" implications of
this name: If one builds a product using chip, that fact would be hard to
recover from a cursory web search.

------
durkie
How is it optimized for SMT? It seems like the PCB that you mounted it to
would need to have a hole or milled pocket in it to accommodate the backside
thickness of the CHIP. Not sure how feasible a pocket is, but a hole would
mean you then lose all your layers/backside in that area.

~~~
leggomylibro
The edges of the board have round plated indents near the through holes, which
makes them easier for machines to place and solder.

~~~
duskwuff
There are parts on the bottom of the board, including the NAND flash. How does
it sit flat?

~~~
Palomides
you have a cutout underneath, with only a small overlap for the connection.

~~~
thom_nic
Milled cut out in the middle of the mainboard seems like an annoying
additional cost. Headers that raise the module off the board would be
acceptable, except when vertical space is a constraint.

~~~
Palomides
You have to mill at least the outline of your board anyway, a little more is
trivial.

~~~
durkie
yeah, it just seems like if it were really optimized for smt, they would have
milled the back side of the CHIP and placed the flash et al components in
there so that you wouldn't have to find the extra real estate on your own
board.

~~~
Scaevolus
If you were really optimizing for cost, you wouldn't have a $16 monolithic
board in the middle with extra components you don't need. Compared to that,
the extra cost of milling the board you're placing it on is minimal.

------
kenOfYugen
Seems like a good enough prototyping kit for open source hardware. I wonder
why the 'no-price-scaling' per unit for bulk orders is considered a feature
though.

~~~
Waterluvian
Perception that you're always getting the lowest price maybe? I agree with
you, it's odd.

------
cuonic
I still haven't received my original, pre-ordered, CHIP device and here they
are releasing new versions...

------
arcaster
"Chip" has to be one of the worst names possible in terms of branding,
especially when beginners google for tutorials...

------
dcw303
I'm waiting for a PocketCHIP (mainly to mess with pico8) that I preordered at
the start of this month, and it has estimated shipping of November.

I wonder if the Chip Pro shipping in December will have any impact on my
order.

~~~
tluyben2
I have the PocketChip; _great_ device. Recommended for sure. Together with
come CHIPs you can do nice things. Sure for the same price as the PocketChip
you can pick up a far more functional Android / Windows 10 tablet but this has
a keyboard and you can replace anything in it yourself and do interesting
hacking for both software and hardware.

Edit: (I bought the PocketChip for the introductory price; it's more expensive
now but still cheap I find, especially as I would really like more people to
make things like this... Is there anything else than the Pyra & this for
handheld devices with a keyboard that you can actually order now and be quite
sure you'll get it instead of throwing money away?)

~~~
ekianjo
I know it's cheap and all but the keyboard is hardly anything I would
recommend for typing anything for more than 5 minutes. It's probably among the
worst things out there to type on.

~~~
dcw303
When I was googling the PocketCHIP I was surprised to find some random forum
posts warning people NOT to peel the clear plastic coating off the keys, as
apparently they hold them in place! That's certainly something I can imagine
doing.

~~~
int_19h
Oh yes, definitely heed that advice. I almost ripped mine off before I
realized what it's there for. A very unfortunate omission on their part -
there should be a warning in screaming caps on the device, or at least
somewhere in the packaging.

------
Animats
Great hardware, but do you really want to run a full Linux system on low-end
IoT devices? That's what made the recent massive DDOS attack possible - lots
of little machines with way too much network-side functionality.

Linux just has too much attack surface.

~~~
willvarfar
Its not Linux that was being attacked, it was the apps that were running.

From [https://blog.cloudflare.com/say-cheese-a-snapshot-of-the-
mas...](https://blog.cloudflare.com/say-cheese-a-snapshot-of-the-massive-ddos-
attacks-coming-from-iot-cameras/)

> While it's not possible for us to investigate all the attacking devices, it
> is fair to say that these attacks came from Internet-of-Things (IoT)
> category of devices.

> There are multiple hints confirming this theory. First, all of the attacking
> devices have port 23 (telnet) open (closing connection immediately) or
> closed. Never filtered. This is a strong hint that the malware disabled the
> telnet port just after it installed itself.

> Most of the hosts from the Vietnamese networks look like connected CCTV
> cameras. Multiple have open port 80 with presenting "NETSurveillance WEB"
> page.

> The Ukrainian devices are a bit different though. Most have port 80 closed,
> making it harder to identify.

> We had noticed one device with port 443 open serving a valid TLS cert issued
> by Western Digital, handling domain device-xxxx.wd2go.com suggesting it was
> a hard drive (Network Attached Storage to be precise).

So its not Linux, its the apps. The insecurity of the boxes has nothing to do
with their choice of OS, but rather their shoddy apps. Its a general pattern
for IoT devices to be configured with default passwords and internet-facing
admin pages etc, and using another OS doesn't directly address any of this.

ADDING: I'm a big fan and watcher of everything from OpenBSD to QubesOS to the
Mill CPU to CHERI and all the rest, and I'm reluctant to say that right now
the OS is immaterial to security :( ;)

~~~
sittonOK
Exactly. The best-selling home IP camera on Amazon [1], from a Chinese
company, has the following "features":

\- Default Wifi setup is done through their phone app through the "cloud" (let
me tell you how much I trust that one)

\- Has a webserver listening on port 80 with default u:p admin:admin (to be
fair, their instructions are clear that you should change it, but it's not a
mandatory part of the setup process)

\- Has an RTSP server listening on port 554

\- All of this a disaster waiting to happen because of UPnP (ugh, how many
home routers have this enabled...)

\- Sends outbound TCP traffic to amcrestcloud.com and amcrestview.com every
few seconds (cannot be disabled on the device) [2]

\- Sends a continuous stream of UDP data to 52.91.189.219:8800 (cannot be
disabled on the device) [2]

The only way to prevent this device from a calling a CNC server is with a
hardware firewall or an isolated LAN segment (I suppose this idea isn't at all
specific to this camera). I bet fewer than 0.01% of their customers do that.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Amcrest-IP2M-841-1920TVL-Wireless-
Cam...](https://www.amazon.com/Amcrest-IP2M-841-1920TVL-Wireless-
Camera/dp/B0145OQTPG/)

[2]

    
    
      01:41:17 firewall: [CamVLAN-WAN-20-Reject] SRC=CAM-IP DST=54.87.129.131 LEN=60 PROTO=TCP DPT=12366
      01:41:20 firewall: [CamVLAN-WAN-20-Reject] SRC=CAM-IP DST=54.158.250.32 LEN=60 PROTO=TCP DPT=443
      01:41:27 firewall: [CamVLAN-WAN-20-Reject] SRC=CAM-IP DST=52.91.189.219 LEN=295 PROTO=UDP DPT=8800
      01:41:27 firewall: [CamVLAN-WAN-20-Reject] SRC=CAM-IP DST=52.91.189.219 LEN=295 PROTO=UDP DPT=8800
      01:41:27 firewall: [CamVLAN-WAN-20-Reject] SRC=CAM-IP DST=52.91.189.219 LEN=295 PROTO=UDP DPT=8800
      01:41:28 firewall: [CamVLAN-WAN-20-Reject] SRC=CAM-IP DST=52.91.189.219 LEN=295 PROTO=UDP DPT=8800
      01:41:28 firewall: [CamVLAN-WAN-20-Reject] SRC=CAM-IP DST=52.91.189.219 LEN=295 PROTO=UDP DPT=8800
      01:41:29 firewall: [CamVLAN-WAN-20-Reject] SRC=CAM-IP DST=52.91.189.219 LEN=295 PROTO=UDP DPT=8800

~~~
mixedCase
> All of this a disaster waiting to happen because of UPnP (ugh, how many home
> routers have this enabled...)

The problem is shitty UPnP implementations rather than UPnP itself. If you're
pwned you are fucked one way or another, if an online device is vulnerable
it's going to be vulnerable wether it exposes itself through UPnP or if it's
manually forwarded.

And in the end if you don't like it and want to do your own manual forwarding
in a home router, you're free to disable it.

------
qwertyuiop924
...Now if only we unwashed, non-kickstarter-using masses could actually buy a
chip+pocketchip. I'd pay good money for it, but with orders this backed up,
I'm not putting money in for a ticket to a waiting list that may never end.

------
pmontra
A typo on the home page

    
    
        Powered by a chip you can actually buy.
        R8 SoC + 256MB DDR3
        1 package. 1 price.
        $6 in any quantity.
    

All the other references to the price are for $16, not $6.

~~~
bentpins
I think that means you can buy the SOC instead of the whole board for $6.

~~~
pmontra
Maybe you're right and I've been mislead. Hopefully I'm the only one. How
about a different copy:

    
    
        Buy only the chip
        R8 SoC + 256MB DDR3
        1 package. 1 price.
        $6 in any quantity.

------
sbierwagen
[https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1065/9514/t/18/assets/chip...](https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1065/9514/t/18/assets/chippro_alpha_img.png?3357780439954442636)
Those USB sockets are mighty close together.

~~~
tdicola
That's just the developer breakout board, I doubt they intend people to use it
in production devices. Most people are going to design their own boards that
this solders into as a module.

------
freewizard
There's a post[1] on their forum for more detail. TL;DR they are announce 2
new hardware

* GR8 - a 14mm x 14mm System-in-Package, combines 1GHz R8 SoC with 256MB of DDR3 memory - $6 - available in any quantity in December 2016

* C.H.I.P. Pro - GR8 + 512MB NAND + WiFi/BT + ..., 76% smaller than C.H.I.P. - $16 - available in volume December 2016 and Dev Kits are on sale today for $49 shipping in December 2016

Having some hobby project with CHIP and loving it, but I have to say this
naming of Pro sounds misleading, I'd rather call it Air :)

[1] [https://bbs.nextthing.co/t/c-h-i-p-shipping-update-three-
new...](https://bbs.nextthing.co/t/c-h-i-p-shipping-update-three-new-
additions-to-the-c-h-i-p-family/10620)

------
djvdorp
Maybe I missed it, but how does the CHIP Pro compare to the previous CHIP?

~~~
faragon
Previous CHIP has twice the RAM (512MB vs 256MB) and eight times more flash
(4GB vs 512MB), and it is much cheaper (9$ vs 16$). The "Pro" CPU has same
specs (1GHz ARM v7a). The only advantadge is smaller components, and probably
less power consumption.

In my opinion, the 8$ CHIP is better than the 16$ "CHIP Pro". Also, for 15$
you can get a Pine64 [1] with much better specs (512MB RAM, 4 ARM64 Cortex A53
cores, ethernet, USBs, HDMI output, etc. -without flash/WiFi/Bluetooth-).

I guess that the 9$ price for the original CHIP was too low, being the reason
of shipping delays (needing to compensate the lower board price with
overpriced add-ons, with the risk of if not selling enough add-ons, running
out of budget (?)).

[1] [https://www.pine64.org/](https://www.pine64.org/) (I'm not related to
Pine64, just a happy customer)

~~~
sobkas
Did you have any problems mentioned in this blog post[1]?

[1] [http://vincentsanders.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-pine-stays-
gr...](http://vincentsanders.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-pine-stays-green-in-
winter-wisdom.html)

~~~
faragon
I had only three minor issues:

1) A 5V 2A power suply is required (cheap to buy e.g. on Amazon or eBay). It
boots with 5V 1.5A, too, but less stable if you are using the two USB ports at
once with devices requiring notable power (e.g. wifi adapter).

2) Requires a 1080p HDMI monitor/TV, at least, for the images I tried (you can
change that, editing a file in the SD card image, I knew that afterwards).

3) The OS image I use (Debian) have a bug in the network driver so I have to
boot with network cable unplugged, and after booting, plugging it, and
stop/start the network in the network icon (top right Debian desktop bar). It
may be already fixed, but because it works as it is, I have no problem to
click twice to restart the network after infrequent reboots I do for
maintenance (e.g. once a month). I'll update it when I see someone reporting
that it got fixed.

Regarding temperature, I put small metallic heatsinks (fanless) over the SoC
and over the I/O chip. Running flawless on 100% load (where I live maximum
temperature is about 35ºC in Summer, and I had not problems at all running the
board 24/7 as ARM64 build server).

It is true that some provided images have issues, e.g. lack of 3D hardware
acceleration on Debian.

TL;DR: for ARM64 development and GPIO stuff the Pine64 board is great (1 and
2GB model, the 512MB for head-less Linux), as "Linux desktop home cinema", it
is not, because of lack of hardware-accelerated video and 3D support on
provided Linux desktop disk images. However, using the same board (models with
>= 1GB) you can run Android, with hardware acceleration, if I recall correctly
(haven't tested Android myself on that board, yet).

------
joeyh
Seems this is not the same form factor or pins as the CHIP. So it can't be
swapped out to upgrade PocketCHIP, etc. They seem to be missing an opportunity
here to create a standard. Pity, I had assumed that was the goal.

(Of course, maybe there was a good reason to throw away the first attempt at a
standard..)

------
chapingt
Will this one take a year to ship, too?

------
wiradikusuma
i own the original chip. i don't understand what this thing is about, a
higher-spec chip?

~~~
fingar
The changes are:

1\. It is now SiP, not SoC, because the GR8 chip incorporates 512MB RAM!
System-in-Package.

2\. They made changes here and there so all of the GR8 is open compared to the
previous SoC. Most notably I expect the video decoding/encoding in hardware
should be unable now.

3\. Much smaller form factor.

4\. Now has very fast NAND memory, so flash once and forget.

5\. Overall they got input from developers and implemented what is needed.

6\. Most important, same day Linux kernel support for the GR8 in Linus's tree.
The commit was accepted a few days ago.

~~~
Narishma
I believe it's 256MB of RAM and 512MB of NAND flash.

------
gambiting
I honestly thought it was going to be the CHIP computer magazine(does it still
exist?)

------
LAMike
Is it possible to make use this as a starting point for an open source
smartphone?

~~~
wyager
You can use any SoC as the starting point for an open source smartphone. I
don't think this is appropriate, though, given the inability to break out
high-bandwidth busses from the board, e.g. for a video display or LTE
networking.

~~~
lucb1e
3g is plenty fast, for the next few years at least. The only advantage of LTE
is latency, and there's only LTE when you're in the middle of a city and
probably have wifi anyway.

Owning a phone that came out like 3 months before 4g got built into everything
(from high-end to cheap stuff), I can say I've never missed it. I'd rather
they spend money on improving 3g reception, which is pretty good but could
still be a lot better.

~~~
wyager
> 3g is plenty fast, for the next few years at least. The only advantage of
> LTE is latency

???? LTE is orders of magnitude faster.

> and there's only LTE when you're in the middle of a city and probably have
> wifi anyway.

Not in the US. Every marginally populated area has it.

~~~
lucb1e
> LTE is orders of magnitude faster.

Yeah but that doesn't make 3g slow. Like I said, 3g is plenty fast, meaning
it's fast enough for mobile browsing and even watching videos (though videos
over mobile data is just stealing money out of your own wallet, but that's a
separate issue). That 4g/LTE is _faster_ doesn't make 3g any slower. The only
slightly noticeable advantage of LTE is latency or downloading large files
(which you wouldn't do over a metered connection if you had a choice).

> Not in the US. Every marginally populated area has it.

Looking at coverage maps of the Netherlands, I guess I'm outdated. There's
little difference between 3g and 4g anymore. I remember not long ago when 3g
was nearly everywhere (so close to 100% coverage) and then they started
putting down 4g everywhere. 3g advancement stopped altogether. Right now it
looks like they just upgraded the 3g spots to 3g+4g and forgot about advancing
the network at all.

------
pollitos
Hoping to put this or RPi3 into foldable card cases and connect to power,
vga/lcd monitor, keyboard and mouse for schools in developing world. Would the
chip or chip pro be better than RPi3 please?

~~~
graycrow
Well, CHIP Pro is not suitable for this use case. I would recommend RPi3
because it have more CPU power, more USB ports (you can connect kb and mouse
without using a hub), built in Ethernet and HDMI port, so you can connect HDMI
and DVI monitors directly (DVI with passive adapter). CHIP have only composite
video out of the box (as well as RPi) and in order to connect HDMI or VGA you
need to purchase additional "dip" board. So, to round this up, RPi is better
except you need VGA, in this case CHIP + VGA DIP is probably a better choice,
but it would require an USB hub.

~~~
graycrow
But on second though, CHIP have a 4GB on-board storage, and or RPi you need to
use removable micro SD card. I'm not sure if kids and removable micro SD's is
a good combination, it may be ok, may be not, I just don't know.

~~~
creshal
Nothing you can't fix with liberal application of glue.

------
hatsunearu
Will it have 29 dollar shipping like the original CHIP?

------
stuartaxelowen
What's with the "no NDA required"? Who requires NDAs for their datasheets?

~~~
Jasper_
Every chip vendor I've dealt with, from Amlogic to Allwinner to Freescale,
requires a signed NDA for full documentation. Public documentation is usually
heavily redacted.

The GR8 seems to be a rebadged Allwinner chip, and the no-NDA datasheet seems
to be next to useless, to be honest.

~~~
ZenoArrow
> "The GR8 seems to be a rebadged Allwinner chip"

It could be, but reading up on the features of the C.H.I.P. Pro it supports
mainline Linux. I assumed this meant without blobs. Is there mainline support
for any Allwinner chips?

~~~
mappu
Many A20 features are in mainline kernels now, although sunxi-3.4 is still
recommended for full hardware support.

[http://linux-sunxi.org/Linux_mainlining_effort#Status_Matrix](http://linux-
sunxi.org/Linux_mainlining_effort#Status_Matrix)

EDIT: The GR8 is specifically called out on this page as having mainline
support from kernel 4.9.

~~~
thom_nic
I've been running bananian with the 4.4 kernel on my bpi-R1 (A20 SoC) and
everything seems to be working fine. Although I don't use it for anything
graphical (it's a networking/storage/server device.) Can't say how much it's
relying on binary blobs though.

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dpc_pw
What is realistically a wifi range that I could get with that thing?

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mcmatterson
I can't seem to find any mention of the specific OS these use. Anyone?

~~~
mcmatterson
[https://github.com/NextThingCo/CHIP_Pro-
Hardware/blob/master...](https://github.com/NextThingCo/CHIP_Pro-
Hardware/blob/master/Datasheets/CHIP_PRO_Datasheet_v1.0.pdf) suggests it's
GadgetOS, which appears to be a New Thing. Anyone have any info on it?

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singularity2001
>> "GR8 pin names"

33-CSID4-SDC2-CMD-PE8

gotta be kidding

~~~
beardicus
The first number, "33" is the pin number of the CHIP Pro, "CSID4-SDC2-CMD" are
the functions, and "PE8" is the actual pin name from the GR8 module. The key
on that diagram is confusing.

~~~
singularity2001
Thanks for explaining. (and thanks for agreeing that it is 'slightly'
confusing)

