It's smaller than a credit card yet powerful enough to act like a super cheap PC. How cheap? It costs less than $10.
C.H.I.P. is a micro-computer that allows you to surf the Web, check email over Wi-Fi and play games with a Bluetooth controller. The minicomputer—basically a chip that hooks up to an external monitor—has a 1 GHz processor, 4GBs of storage and 512MB of RAM, according to its Kickstarter page. (Tweet this)
The Next Thing Co., a company based in Oakland, Calif., began a Kickstarter campaign for the C.H.I.P. computer in May with a funding goal of $50,000.
It has since blown past that goal, and by a large factor. The campaign has brought in just under $690,000 and counting as of Monday morning. The fundraising campaign ends June 6.
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The small computer is designed for a mass audience, including students, teachers, grandparents, children, artists, makers, hackers and inventors, according to its Kickstarter page.
Raspberry Pi is another full-functioning, no-frills computer. Like C.H.I.P., the Raspberry Pi is basically a computer chip that plugs into a computer monitor or TV. It costs $35 and uses a standard keyboard and mouse.
Raspberry Pi teaches users how to program in languages like Scratch and Python.
