£4 Raspberry Pi Zero

[Garacesh]

Shrinking to Zero: The Raspberry Pi gets smaller - BBC News

What the world needs now is Pi, sweet $5 Raspberry Pi Zero • The Register

 

Interesting.. I know one of the things that's stopped our staff looking at the Pi's here is the price-to-risk-of-theft ratio. At £4 I reckon you can't complain at that. Not as good as the B+, but quicker than the 1. And smaller, too!

 

The device comes loaded with a Broadcom BCM2835 chip processor, including a 1GHz ARM11 core, that has been "upclocked" making it 40 per cent faster than the Raspberry Pi 1.

 

It has 512MB RAM, an HDMI connector, SD card, two Micro USB ports and the same GPIO pinout as Raspberry Pi 2, which was launched in February this year.

 

And it's titchy, with a form factor measuring at just 65mm x 30mm x 5mm.[/Quote]

[sted]

if only it had a nic

[Garacesh]

Yeah, bit of a shame, that, but with 2 USB's or the GPIO it shouldn't be too hard to make it networked, no?

 

Edit: Actually, nuts. One of those MicroUSB's is for power in. Which leaves just the one. So practically anything you want to do with this will require utilising the GPIO.

Edited November 26, 2015 by Garacesh

[pcstru]

Yeah, bit of a shame, that, but with 2 USB's or the GPIO it shouldn't be too hard to make it networked, no?

 

Edit: Actually, nuts. One of those MicroUSB's is for power in. Which leaves just the one. So practically anything you want to do with this will require utilising the GPIO.

 

If you need more than one USB, you can always use a hub. I see this as competing with Arduino 2560 - with plenty of pros AND cons to separate the two.

[Garacesh]

If you need more than one USB, you can always use a hub. I see this as competing with Arduino 2560 - with plenty of pros AND cons to separate the two.

 

Yes but once you buy a hub, consider the extra power (for the hub), etc, is it not worth just buying the B+?

[pcstru]

Yes but once you buy a hub, consider the extra power (for the hub), etc, is it not worth just buying the B+?

Probably. Depends on the application. I was thinking more of a robot (say a quad) where you occasionally need to plug in a mouse/keboard etc but mostly you want the on-board data usb to just host the wireless (or data logging etc). The weight saving there might make sense over the B+.

[Garacesh]

Hm, very valid point.

[Duranis]

I think a lot of the idea with this as well is to make it as cheap as possible to remove price as an entry point. I have wanted to play around with the Pi for awhile now but even though it isn't really expensive I still couldn't justify spending the money on it when it was just curiosity. For £4 I don't feel bad about picking one up to play with and if its something I actually get some use from I can get a better version later. I suspect there are probably a few people out there that feel the same way.

 

Also for a school club 10 of these at £40 vs 1 B at £30 is kind of a good deal. Again if the club has interest and the kids are wanting to do more with it then they could pick up a couple of the B versions and use the Zero's as a starting device.

[Danp]

Got mine yesterday, a small hub with a usb > ether works fine.

[Arthur]

This is quite interesting.

 

• Raspberry Pi Zero - Power Consumption Comparison
  
• Raspberry Pi Zero - Conserve power and reduce draw to 30mA
  

With a high mAh USB battery you could easily run the Pi Zero for weeks at a time.

[IrritableTech]

This is quite interesting.

 

• Raspberry Pi Zero - Power Consumption Comparison
  
• Raspberry Pi Zero - Conserve power and reduce draw to 30mA
  

With a high mAh USB battery you could easily run the Pi Zero for weeks at a time.

 

30mA resting is pretty impressive - I've been playing with Arduino Pro Mini (clones) on solar projects that pull 23mA using the on board voltage regulator - much less processing power but it is actively running code, reading sensors, sending pins high etc.

[Crumpet]

They sold out from the website on the first day. I picked up one up in Tesco's free on the magazine. I called back to buy a couple more the next day but they'd all sold out also.

 

At £4 they do have a novelty value about them. Mine is still sealed in it's box.

[pcstru]

With a high mAh USB battery you could easily run the Pi Zero for weeks at a time.

 

It is interesting to try to think of actual applications which would need both the computing grunt the PiZero offers and which want a battery supply which will last a long time.

 

Just to put the power requirement into context, we would require a battery of 10,000+ mAH capacity to get a few weeks at idle. A minimal Arduino circuit could be configured to draw 1uA when 'idle' - that's less electrical power than you generate rubbing your fingers together. I can power that with a CR2032 coin cell battery for a few pence and depending on the application, it could go for years.