Re: [DIYbio] Amazon unintentionally solves "low cost lab automation device" challenges

Yep, Chip's biggest weakness is "I can't get one". :)

There is a use-case tradeoff between the boards as-they-come. So if you need display but not wifi, the zero is a good choice, and vice versa. The Make article does a decent (but imperfect) comparison on cost-of-ownership if you want both and they come to rough parity.

Rough, though; the CHIP has a more powerful processor and is open source most of the way down, whereas the Pi Zero is same clock speed but older chip design (probably missing some performant instructions?), and requires a secret-sauce blob to boot and run. The CHIP is apparently getting mainlined into Linux so distro options should be massively improved whereas RPi will be limited by that blob architecture and will likely never reach that level of support.

IDK though, I don't have either yet. Planning a CHIP as soon as they leave preorder. :)

I bought aa BlackSwift and it's nice but I didn't do my research: MIPS architecture isn't supported by Go and is harder generally to target. Should Have Bought ARM™.