If you take a quick glance through the technology sections on both Kickstarter and Indiegogo, you’ll see a ton of innovative, cutting edge projects and products. However, you will see very few new takes on older products. However, we just came across one such product: the Imp Computer. While, yes, the absence of new takes on old products is what sparked our interest, after looking at the Imp it become clear that this is an incredibly unique product:
Meet imp. imp is a disruptive home computation solution: a handy, easy to use computer, based on open source technology, and cloud software services, running on a powerful single-board CPU: 1.7GHz, quad-core, ARM V9. It connects to any of your home displays. It is your Internet kiosk, your TV media center, and your wireless digital hub.1
The Imp runs on Ubuntu, and the team has made a huge commitment to open-source everything involved with the computer.
We are 100% committed to Open Source, and all of our software components are open and public for anyone to see and contribute. Nevertheless, we do offer proprietary services, which are closed, that you can opt out of. In addition, our hardware is composed of an open source single-board platform, the Odroid U3. Please note that Odroid’s user-land GPU drivers are library binary format, which are non-open.2
Perhaps the best aspect of the Imp is the price tag. Right now, you can still grab the Imp for the early-bird price of $129. Once those are gone, though, you can still get one for $149. Here is a closer look at the computer:
