Raspberry Pi Zero is more powerful than the first generation of Raspberry Pi, but it’s also a lot smaller.
Advertisement
We don’t have a Thanksgiving Day in the United Kingdom, but we do have Raspberry Pi. Like the original Raspberry Pi the intent is to get computing into the hands of everyone, and by shrinking the size of the board and moving to mini ports (such as micro USB, micro SD and mini HDMI) it has been possible to shrink the cost of the device itself, down to $5. “At the start of this year, we began work on an even cheaper Raspberry Pi to help these people take the plunge”. The Zero is powered by a Broadcom BCM2835 (the same SoC in the Raspberry Pi 1), with a 1.1GHz ARM11 CPU core.
This month’s MagPi magazine comes with a free Pi Zero.
If you always wanted to run a Bitcoin node but did not want to spend $40 plus shipping on a Raspberry Pi, fear not because an even cheaper alternative is here. There’s a full-size GPIO header, albeit one which arrives unpopulated, but little else: the DSI and CSI connectors, for cameras and flat-panel displays respectively, have been scrapped, while the composite video output is relegated to unpopulated solder points on the board. It should also be fully compatible with most existing Raspberry Pi software and projects. At 65mm long, 30mm wide, and 5mm tall, it’s about half the size of a credit card.
The Zero is available from a bunch of retailers in the United Kingdom for £4 (Element14, The Pi Hut, Pimoroni) and $5 in the USA (Adafruit).
The Raspberry Pi Zero, a £4 microcomputer, has launched today – and it’s being bundled as a free cover-mount giveaway on The MagPi Magazine.
“Of all the things we do at Raspberry Pi, driving down the cost of computer hardware remains one of the most important”, says a company blog post introducing the Pi Zero.
Advertisement
The first Raspberry Pi was launched in 2012, and the company’s mission is to produce low-priced devices to introduce people to the world of computer science.
