Still no CHIP from The Next Thing. Have been waiting months for order to ship. Should have ordered from Syed. But, lots having big delays too. Don’t want my interest in Outernet to wane. Looks like Dreamcatcher and Skylark is a final destination for Outernet. Will support and discussion for the CHIP method be coming to an end someday? In some ways technology is an evil doer, changing so fast, one can’t possibly keep up. Please excuse my rambling. So, now I’ll order the $99 kit. Or is there a “Super” kit coming down the pike in a couple of months! That’s too long to wait! I’ll order soon, I think.
CHIP and Dreamcatcher are both single board computers, which both use the Allwinner A13 SoC/CPU. Although the specific images we provide for Dreamcatcher (Armbian) will not work on CHIP, Next Thing Co does provide an equivalent Debian-based OS called Chipian. If we provide instructions or release software for Armbian, then it will also work on Chipian (as well as Debian on the desktop).
Although we are always working on the next thing, I can’t confirm when it will be released. We were hoping to have Dreamcatcher ready six months ago…
So, if I order Dreamcatcher, and upload Armbian you indicate, will I be able to receive and decode Outernet data like I did before with my Pi setup?
Not quite. You will eventually be able to download Outernet data to simple directories, like in Outernet in a Box. The L-band channel is changing, so the demod is also changing. We’ll have more details on that as soon as it is ready.
OK, so right now the new board and I loading Armbian on it, is just the platform for a new Outernet direction? I see this board version is V2.03. Does this mean this is the firmware version on it now, or the hardware version? I hope it is not the latter. Meaning we would need to buy another board later. And as it stands now, the board is an Armbian Linux machine, till it becomes an Outernet machine in the future. Is this correct? What can I do with it right now?
Can I at least receive the L band satellite, but no data as you said? Thanks, Syed
Don