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This is a Raspberry Pi robot kit called GoPiGo[1]. And this is the biggest problem I've found with the C.H.I.P. - everything you do with the C.H.I.P. is somethi

by iuguy 10y ago

This is a Raspberry Pi robot kit called GoPiGo[1]. And this is the biggest problem I've found with the C.H.I.P. - everything you do with the C.H.I.P. is something that can be done more easily on a Raspberry Pi. It's not an indictment of the C.H.I.P., which is a massive effort (although having played around a bit with two I'm sad to say it has too many problems for me to stick with), but more a testament to the Pi. [1] - https://github.com/DexterInd/GoPiGo https://github.com/DexterInd/GoPiGo

wiradikusuma 10y ago
could you elaborate more? i have few chips and pis in my drawer and just want to be prepared what's ahead.. some day..
- maweki 10y ago
  I had problems with my C.H.I.P.s not booting fully when the power was not sufficient. They are very iffy that way. Also the WiFi is not great. The larger PIs, on the other hand, will boot from a potato battery but will corrupt your SD-card doing so. If you can get away with using a PI-Zero (100mA max draw), you should do so. You can basically use anything to power it.
  - johncole 10y ago
    You can hook this robot, the GoPiGo, up to a Raspberry Pi Zero as well: http://www.dexterindustries.com/projects/gopigo-raspberry-pi-zero/ http://www.dexterindustries.com/projects/gopigo-raspberry-pi... and a video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxZVe_N9Tbk&t=236s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxZVe_N9Tbk&t=236s
- iuguy 10y ago
  So I don't want to rag on something that had a huge amount of effort put into it, but... (and these buts apply to other systems as well as the C.H.I.P.) 1. The Allwinner chipset was a bad choice. It's non-free, flaky, underpowered (performs worse than a Pi Zero in my non-scientific tests so far). 2. The use of full fat Debian may contribute to 1. I think the AllWinner SBC is more suited to Android phones than general purpose SBC use, and using full fat Debian as a primary OS is potentially throwing away resources on things like a full fat libc. Yes there's Angstrom Linux as an option, but Angstrom's not really well maintained. Again, not limited to CHIP but definitely including it. 3. The PocketCHIP as interesting as it is, is a ballache compared to using a Pi Zero. For a Pi Zero I can install retropie and be up and running in under 10 mins. For PocketCHIP I have to hand configure each emulator, not all the debian packages work (weird segfaults and errors ahoy) and so on. Again, the PocketCHIP is not the only thing that experiences this, but once you've played Pico-8 for a bit, you start to realise that this is the only game in town for this platform unless you're willing to expend serious effort on work already done elsewhere. 4. The flash mechanism. Good god, where do I begin. Firmware flash updates require Chrome to be installed. That's right, the flash updater is a Chrome extension - a web browser extension. This is a ludicrous choice. A web browser is for browsing the web, not flashing firmware onto devices. There is an alternative route buried deep in the docs, but this is pretty convoluted. To flash the firmware in order to get hardware accelerated CPU support, I had to install chrome on my mac, fail several times thanks to the GUI interface clearing errors after they appear, try again with different combinations of USB hub, swear at the damned thing, then repeat the entire process on Windows. 5. I've alluded to this elsewhere, but the Debian build is broken in places. Various packages break because they don't take the architecture into account. Again, this isn't limited to the CHIP, but includes it. The bottom line is that a $9 computer has a lot of competition depending on target use. Against a Pi Zero it loses to the incredible Pi Ecosystem. Against a Beaglebone it loses to a completely open design. Against a ZSun Wifi reader or plenty of cheap WRT devices, it loses on performance because of the full fat libc and the tightly specialised nature of the underlying distro. At best (and without some serious work) the CHIP is destined to be a footnote amongst closed and partially broken Pi clones. At worst the PocketCHIP will be forgotten about in a couple of years. It's a shame, from a hardware perspective PocketCHIP has a lot of potential, being pretty hackable. Sure, the keyboard is terrible, the screen's pretty crappy and the peeling plastic is a nightmare, but it's got huge potential. I just don't see the resources there to bring it up to the same level as the Pi ecosystem. Again, this isn't just limited to the CHIP - we'll see the same thing with the Onion Omega2, we've seen this with the Pine64 and various Pi type devices. The fact that this post is about a port of a Pi-specific device sadly says more about CHIP's future than anything else.
  - stonogo 10y ago
    1. I completely agree. 2. I think you're right but I don't know what the better answer is -- I don't like the idea of raspbian being the only answer. Maybe they'll motivate Debian to improve in this regard? 3. This is a strange comparison. The PocketCHIP is a bit of a unique offering -- I'm not aware of a self-contained anything based on the pi zero that I can order off the shelf and use out of the box. I'd be delighted to see a counterexample! 4. There are linux-based tools to flash the firmware. I've never actually used the Chrome approach. Here: http://docs.getchip.com/chip.html#flash-chip-firmware http://docs.getchip.com/chip.html#flash-chip-firmware 5. Please report these problems! If not to debbugs, at least make a blog post or a gist or something. Get the information out there! I agree with most of your conclusions, with the caveat that the Pocket CHIP is a unique device, in a world of years-long any-day-now products. It is very refreshing to see someone accomplish what they set out to do, warts and all.
    - voltagex_ 10y ago
      I'll add on to this - I'm happy to help people report Debian bugs.
    - iuguy 10y ago
      For point 3, there are options like Adafruit's PiGrrl series, some of which I believe need 3d printing (but you can order that done for you from elsewhere). The downside of the PiGrrl is the lack of keyboard. The upside are the controls are better. On point 4, yes there are, but this is rather convoluted too. Web browsers are supposed to be used to browse web pages. If they wanted to use javascript to create a cross-platform app, they should've used something like electron. Point 5 I'll get round to when I have time, but I'm very time poor. I've already started seeing if I can improve mednafen support for Atari Lynx and get the GLES in 4.4 working better with mednafen. I'm totally with you on the idea of raspbian being the only answer - I really don't like that. Unfortunately many of the problems come from the fact that the Allwinner chip used is so poorly supported and that people don't write code for multiple architectures, so packages build but then you get segfaults over stupid things like endianness when you run binaries.
  - 10y ago
tlrobinson 10y ago
The C.H.I.P. has three features I absolutely love compared to the Pi Zero: built-in WiFi, built-in flash, and USB serial console. Steps to set up a Raspberry Pi Zero on WiFi: 1. buy the Pi Zero ($5), MicroSD card ($5), USB WiFi adapter ($10), and USB OTG adapter ($1) (total = ~$21) 2. flash the MicroSD card 3. either: a. mount the SD card on your computer and figure out which WiFi configuration files to edit b. buy a serial cable, open a serial console, configure WiFi c. buy a mini HDMI adapter + mouse/keyboard, connect to a monitor, configure WiFi Steps to set up a C.H.I.P. on WiFi: 1. buy C.H.I.P ($9) 2. connect to USB, open serial console, configure WiFi
- johncole 10y ago
  Never thought of it this way, but year, it's a lot easier to get started with.
- chrisballinger 10y ago
  One caveat I noticed is that you need to use 'cu' instead of 'telnet' or 'screen' or the console gets garbled during wifi setup, at least on my machine. Took a while to figure that one out.
  - tlrobinson 10y ago
    I use `screen` and immediately do `export TERM=ansi` after logging in and it seems to work fine.
- iuguy 10y ago
  Point 2 didn't work on my Mac, nor on my Windows box. I did notice later on that I needed to install libusb drivers for it to work with Windows 10, after installing it to flash, flashing worked but I haven't tried the serial connection yet.
iuguy 10y ago
Further to other people's posts (and again, I don't want to spend time ragging on this, it's got some really good ideas, the PocketCHIP is definitely an innovative concept and I do want to see this go well), someone posted a thread in the CHIP forum that accurately reflects what I think will be the experience of many people here: https://bbs.nextthing.co/t/a-constant-struggle/12141 https://bbs.nextthing.co/t/a-constant-struggle/12141

by iuguy 10y ago

wiradikusuma 10y ago

could you elaborate more? i have few chips and pis in my drawer and just want to be prepared what's ahead.. some day..

maweki 10y ago
I had problems with my C.H.I.P.s not booting fully when the power was not sufficient. They are very iffy that way. Also the WiFi is not great. The larger PIs, on the other hand, will boot from a potato battery but will corrupt your SD-card doing so. If you can get away with using a PI-Zero (100mA max draw), you should do so. You can basically use anything to power it.
- johncole 10y ago
  You can hook this robot, the GoPiGo, up to a Raspberry Pi Zero as well: http://www.dexterindustries.com/projects/gopigo-raspberry-pi-zero/ http://www.dexterindustries.com/projects/gopigo-raspberry-pi... and a video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxZVe_N9Tbk&t=236s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxZVe_N9Tbk&t=236s
iuguy 10y ago
So I don't want to rag on something that had a huge amount of effort put into it, but... (and these buts apply to other systems as well as the C.H.I.P.) 1. The Allwinner chipset was a bad choice. It's non-free, flaky, underpowered (performs worse than a Pi Zero in my non-scientific tests so far). 2. The use of full fat Debian may contribute to 1. I think the AllWinner SBC is more suited to Android phones than general purpose SBC use, and using full fat Debian as a primary OS is potentially throwing away resources on things like a full fat libc. Yes there's Angstrom Linux as an option, but Angstrom's not really well maintained. Again, not limited to CHIP but definitely including it. 3. The PocketCHIP as interesting as it is, is a ballache compared to using a Pi Zero. For a Pi Zero I can install retropie and be up and running in under 10 mins. For PocketCHIP I have to hand configure each emulator, not all the debian packages work (weird segfaults and errors ahoy) and so on. Again, the PocketCHIP is not the only thing that experiences this, but once you've played Pico-8 for a bit, you start to realise that this is the only game in town for this platform unless you're willing to expend serious effort on work already done elsewhere. 4. The flash mechanism. Good god, where do I begin. Firmware flash updates require Chrome to be installed. That's right, the flash updater is a Chrome extension - a web browser extension. This is a ludicrous choice. A web browser is for browsing the web, not flashing firmware onto devices. There is an alternative route buried deep in the docs, but this is pretty convoluted. To flash the firmware in order to get hardware accelerated CPU support, I had to install chrome on my mac, fail several times thanks to the GUI interface clearing errors after they appear, try again with different combinations of USB hub, swear at the damned thing, then repeat the entire process on Windows. 5. I've alluded to this elsewhere, but the Debian build is broken in places. Various packages break because they don't take the architecture into account. Again, this isn't limited to the CHIP, but includes it. The bottom line is that a $9 computer has a lot of competition depending on target use. Against a Pi Zero it loses to the incredible Pi Ecosystem. Against a Beaglebone it loses to a completely open design. Against a ZSun Wifi reader or plenty of cheap WRT devices, it loses on performance because of the full fat libc and the tightly specialised nature of the underlying distro. At best (and without some serious work) the CHIP is destined to be a footnote amongst closed and partially broken Pi clones. At worst the PocketCHIP will be forgotten about in a couple of years. It's a shame, from a hardware perspective PocketCHIP has a lot of potential, being pretty hackable. Sure, the keyboard is terrible, the screen's pretty crappy and the peeling plastic is a nightmare, but it's got huge potential. I just don't see the resources there to bring it up to the same level as the Pi ecosystem. Again, this isn't just limited to the CHIP - we'll see the same thing with the Onion Omega2, we've seen this with the Pine64 and various Pi type devices. The fact that this post is about a port of a Pi-specific device sadly says more about CHIP's future than anything else.
- stonogo 10y ago
  1. I completely agree. 2. I think you're right but I don't know what the better answer is -- I don't like the idea of raspbian being the only answer. Maybe they'll motivate Debian to improve in this regard? 3. This is a strange comparison. The PocketCHIP is a bit of a unique offering -- I'm not aware of a self-contained anything based on the pi zero that I can order off the shelf and use out of the box. I'd be delighted to see a counterexample! 4. There are linux-based tools to flash the firmware. I've never actually used the Chrome approach. Here: http://docs.getchip.com/chip.html#flash-chip-firmware http://docs.getchip.com/chip.html#flash-chip-firmware 5. Please report these problems! If not to debbugs, at least make a blog post or a gist or something. Get the information out there! I agree with most of your conclusions, with the caveat that the Pocket CHIP is a unique device, in a world of years-long any-day-now products. It is very refreshing to see someone accomplish what they set out to do, warts and all.
  - voltagex_ 10y ago
    I'll add on to this - I'm happy to help people report Debian bugs.
  - iuguy 10y ago
    For point 3, there are options like Adafruit's PiGrrl series, some of which I believe need 3d printing (but you can order that done for you from elsewhere). The downside of the PiGrrl is the lack of keyboard. The upside are the controls are better. On point 4, yes there are, but this is rather convoluted too. Web browsers are supposed to be used to browse web pages. If they wanted to use javascript to create a cross-platform app, they should've used something like electron. Point 5 I'll get round to when I have time, but I'm very time poor. I've already started seeing if I can improve mednafen support for Atari Lynx and get the GLES in 4.4 working better with mednafen. I'm totally with you on the idea of raspbian being the only answer - I really don't like that. Unfortunately many of the problems come from the fact that the Allwinner chip used is so poorly supported and that people don't write code for multiple architectures, so packages build but then you get segfaults over stupid things like endianness when you run binaries.
- 10y ago

tlrobinson 10y ago

The C.H.I.P. has three features I absolutely love compared to the Pi Zero: built-in WiFi, built-in flash, and USB serial console. Steps to set up a Raspberry Pi Zero on WiFi: 1. buy the Pi Zero ($5), MicroSD card ($5), USB WiFi adapter ($10), and USB OTG adapter ($1) (total = ~$21) 2. flash the MicroSD card 3. either: a. mount the SD card on your computer and figure out which WiFi configuration files to edit b. buy a serial cable, open a serial console, configure WiFi c. buy a mini HDMI adapter + mouse/keyboard, connect to a monitor, configure WiFi Steps to set up a C.H.I.P. on WiFi: 1. buy C.H.I.P ($9) 2. connect to USB, open serial console, configure WiFi

johncole 10y ago
Never thought of it this way, but year, it's a lot easier to get started with.
chrisballinger 10y ago
One caveat I noticed is that you need to use 'cu' instead of 'telnet' or 'screen' or the console gets garbled during wifi setup, at least on my machine. Took a while to figure that one out.
- tlrobinson 10y ago
  I use `screen` and immediately do `export TERM=ansi` after logging in and it seems to work fine.
iuguy 10y ago
Point 2 didn't work on my Mac, nor on my Windows box. I did notice later on that I needed to install libusb drivers for it to work with Windows 10, after installing it to flash, flashing worked but I haven't tried the serial connection yet.

iuguy 10y ago

Further to other people's posts (and again, I don't want to spend time ragging on this, it's got some really good ideas, the PocketCHIP is definitely an innovative concept and I do want to see this go well), someone posted a thread in the CHIP forum that accurately reflects what I think will be the experience of many people here: https://bbs.nextthing.co/t/a-constant-struggle/12141 https://bbs.nextthing.co/t/a-constant-struggle/12141