
Raspberry Pi Zero: the $5 computer - MarcScott
https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/raspberry-pi-zero/
======
maheart
This is seriously impressive.

While the Raspberry Pi is not the perfect hacker-friendly computer, it has
done a lot of good. Some reasons off the top of my head:

1\. Providing a low cost computer has given many people access to computers.
Giving more people access to the web, email, an office suit, a programming
environment AND giving people the ability of safely tinker without the fear of
bricking an expensive device.

2\. Introduced many different types of people to the FOSS landscape of
powerful tools (e.g. distros such as Debian, tools such as Python).

3\. The Raspberry Pi foundation has paid developers to write/optimise FOSS
(e.g. paid Collabora to optimise WebkitGTK+ -- I think some Wayland work was
also done).

4\. Built on top of _existing_ FOSS tools (e.g. building Raspbian on top of
Debian), instead of doing everything on their own in a proprietary fashion.
This has no doubt also helped to introduce new people into these communities.

This is a really good counter-point to all the "locked down" (hacker
unfriendly) devices like smart phones and tablets.

~~~
makomk
This is probably the result of boards like the $9 C.H.I.P. stealing their
thunder a little. (Which should actually be able to run Debian, unlike the Pi
- Debian Jessie has built-in support for that generation of Allwinner chips.)
The Pi has not actually been all that cheap lately compared to the
competition. There's no reason they couldn't have done this years ago; like
that Allwinner chip, the BCM2835 is an old, slow processor whose R&D costs
were probably paid back long ago that they wouldn't otherwise be able to sell.
This is especially true of the BCM2835, which is an ARM11 chip that's not
widely supported outside the RPi ecosystem.

~~~
Natanael_L
This could even act as a custom chromecast-ish device. Still cheaper too!

(Although it lacks WiFi AC that the new chromecast has, and probably way
weaker graphics, but a cheap WiFi adapter or ethernet and having most stuff
streamed should be workable.)

~~~
creshal
> (Although it lacks WiFi AC that the new chromecast has, and probably way
> weaker graphics, but a cheap WiFi adapter or ethernet and having most stuff
> streamed should be workable.)

This irks me a bit with the new "$5" RPi. Yes, it's $5… For a device without a
power cord, without networking, and where you need adapters (and/or solder on
a UART) to plug anything into it.

~~~
andrepd
So... you will need to buy a power adapter and an Ethernet cable? That will
come to, what, another fiver?

~~~
creshal
There's no ethernet port. So, also an ethernet adapter. But there's only one
USB port (µUSB, too, so you most likely need an adapter to regular USB). So if
you want more than _just_ ethernet, you'll need an USB hub. But the RasPi's
power supply has always been weak, so better get an actively powered one…

And soon you're paying four times as much for the accessories than for the
RasPi.

~~~
rufugee
How exactly has the power supply been weak? I've been running three PIs (A+, B
and B+) for a few years with no problems with just simple cell phone power
adapters. However, I'm not plugging any extra hardware into them...perhaps
that's why I haven't run into problems?

~~~
extra88
Yes, the parent was talking about lacking power through the Pi's USB ports
thus often requiring a powered USB hub.

My issue is with the Pi's use of micro USB for power, I'd rather it use a
barrel connector, it's not like it doesn't have the space. Yes, I know the
choice is based on the presumption that everyone already has a micro USB power
adapter from a cell phone. The use of micro USB for power on this Pi Zero
makes a lot more sense given the form factor.

------
noonespecial
Oh Nice! They are finally delivering on what I feel was the great promise of
the Raspi in the beginning. Full linux install in the size and price of a
micro (read: Arduino).

Some people are bound to gripe about the "lack" of ports but its not like this
one displaced the A or B models. Its just another spin of the concept where
you don't have to pay for expensive physical parts you don't need. Its a linux
server at a price cheap enough to buy one for each little project you want to
do and then _leave it there_. Makers rejoice.

I've got to hand it to the Raspi folks. They've really done an outstanding job
creating their product line and getting it out to the masses. When they
started, there was nothing but a sea of vaporware and "next-year" promises in
the inexpensive SBC linux world. I rather famously doubted them at first. I am
very happy to have been wrong.

~~~
DHJSH
I have no idea why Arduino is so popular--it has NO debugging support unless
you use an ICE. (People "debug" with printf statements.) We use Netduinos
because with .NET we can single step and inspect variables in live code.

~~~
duskwuff
Why is Arduino so popular? Brand name recognition, a decent standard library,
and a _ton_ of sample code and tutorials online.

I agree that it's not a great platform, though. I personally prefer STM32
these days; it's dirt cheap (a basic development board is <$5) and powerful
(72 MHz / 20 KB RAM / 128 KB flash on one of those boards). I believe there's
even a way to integrate it into the Arduino IDE nowadays!

------
Jemaclus
I've got three Raspberry Pis. I don't know why. I don't know what to do with
them. None of the projects that I've seen have been particularly compelling to
me, and I'm not creative enough to come up with a good idea. So they sit on my
desk, gathering dust, and act as a conversation piece when friends come over.
"That? Yeah, I can build X, Y, or Z." and they say, "oooh, cool" and then I
never actually follow through. I'm a terrible nerd. :(

~~~
Spooks
why not build a htpc or an arcade box? very straight forward and you'll have
more to talk about when your friends come over!

~~~
superuser2
Can you actually build an HTPC? My understanding is they can't really handle
video, except from the purpose-built camera module.

~~~
xanderstrike
That's exactly wrong. They have the same processors as used in phones, which
means they have hardware level decoding for video. My B+ can stream massive
1080p blu-ray rips over ethernet with zero problems. They make fantastic
HTPCs.

~~~
ant6n
My phone doesn't ever play 12GB blu-ray rips; and the rpi hardware is older
than current phones (which use armv7 and armv8). Given the speed of the cpu,
it's surprising it can decode a full H264 stream.

But It's good to know. The down-vote seems unnecessary.

~~~
ac2u
It's not so much software running on the CPU doing the work here. It's
hardware support for decoding via the GPU that enables it.

------
tomjacobs
This seems like an important moment for humans and computers. The cable to
connect the computer now costs more than a 1GHZ computer.

It feels a lot like a tipping point for something.

[http://makezine.com/2015/11/25/raspberry-pi-
announces-5-comp...](http://makezine.com/2015/11/25/raspberry-pi-
announces-5-computer-model-zero/)

~~~
makomk
The cable to connect the computer now has more markup than a 1 GHz computer.
Micro-USB OTG and mini HDMI adapters go for £1 each shipped on eBay, and I
think most of that price is shipping. (Likewise, they've omitted the 40-pin
GPIO header unless you buy the £10 bundle with the "Essentials kit", compared
to £4 for the Pi itself.)

Old, old business model - cut the headline price to the bone, make it back on
cables.

~~~
rdancer
I can't really see that — neither the circuit board header nor the cables are
proprietary.

~~~
makomk
Doesn't have to be - they're relying on people not shopping around for the
cables and accessories, much like big brick-and-mortar retailers such as Best
Buy have done for a long time.

------
TeMPOraL
Arduino Uno for $2, NodeMCU for $3, RPi for $5... please let this trend
continue. A year or two, and we'll basically have computronium - simple dev
boards powerful and cheap enough to just tile your house with them.

I've recently figured out that there's no point in designing your own PCB for
placing sensors at home, when you can get an Arduino and an ESP8266 for $5;
add power (and some ~$0 of voltage regulation) and you have a base station. Or
just buy NodeMCU for $3 and skip on wiring Arduino and ESP8266 together.

~~~
mgraupner
Even more awesome: Skip the extra Arduino and use the ESP8266 as your Arduino.

[https://github.com/esp8266/Arduino](https://github.com/esp8266/Arduino)

~~~
IanCal
I realise how silly this question may seem but here we go:

If I get an ESP8266, I can have something that run code, sit on my home
network wirelessly and use it to do things like report on sensor inputs? Am I
missing some larger expense that would be required as this seems _very_ cheap
compared to other options I've seen.

~~~
bigiain
Yes. At least for limited values of yes.

You need to run it on 3.3v which means 3.3v versions of your sensore or
external level shifting. You've got limited IO compared to, say, Arduino.

But of you've got 3.3v sensors - yeah - all you need is an ESP8266 and some
way of providing 3.3v. (And probably some pulldown/up resistors and decoupling
caps...)

~~~
makomk
I'm pretty sure the digital I/O on the ESP8266 is actually 5V tolerant
according to the datasheet, though this isn't widely advertised and there's
some inaccurate information drifting around from back when the specs weren't
fully known. (The same isn't true of some official Arduino boards which should
not be exposed to 5V on the I/O pins.) It's a very nice little chip.

------
djfergus
Love watching the progress of Raspberry Pi. The attraction of the platform to
me (compared to something more capable, with more ram ghz etc) is that the
ecosystem is now so mature, you can easily google and get a cut and paste
guide to exactly what you want to do. This means you can spend time tinkering
with aspects that interest you rather than maintaining an operating system or
troubleshooting hardware...

I'm curious to see how far optimisations could go. Analagous to the old
consoles where developers could squeeze incredible performance out (compared
to the equivalent processors elsewhere) since it was so uniform. e.g. the
later games on a nintendo or neo geo were incredible compared to what was
capable on a typical 8/16 bit computer of the time.

A $5 version is just going to accelerate this ecosystem... looking forward to
it.

~~~
pjc50
There is a _lot_ of capability on the graphics side, which takes up most of
the die. Can run Quake3 etc. Not very impressive compared to modern PC
graphics, but very handy if you want to put something on a small screen.

------
malandrew
I would love to see someone sell these as preconfigured as minimal bandwidth
tor exit nodes with wifi so they can be spread far and wide. Just connect to
power, make sure it is connected to a wifi network and then leave it alone.
Just make sure it advertises itself as such so that law enforcement knows that
it is likely not owned by the owner of the Internet connection and therefore
doesn't make sense to do anything other than find the device and disable it if
that's what they want. It should have a similar disclaimer as the standard tor
exit not notice, except it should say something like "this tor exit node is
operating on a disposable computer and was placed clandestinely on this
network without the consent of the owner" or something to that effect.

I know there are ethical implications here, but that doesn't mean that
something like this shouldn't or won't exist eventually.

~~~
driverdan
These are not well suited for Tor. No built in networking and a serious lack
of CPU power needed for processing encryption.

~~~
feelix
How much CPU power do you need to process encryption in TOR?

~~~
ascorbic
No wifi, no Ethernet. You need to use a USB adapter.

------
StavrosK
The 80s are widely considered as the golden age of hacking, but what the hell?
I just bought ten microcontrollers that can run Lua/Python/C for $20, there
are full-blown computers for $5, and all the supporting ecosystem (sensors,
components, etc) is cheaper than most toys.

I am very optimistic about the future, given that people (and children) these
days have trivially cheap access to powerful programmable and easily
connectable computers, and hopefully they'll start to demand more and more
that all their other devices are equally hackable. If most people have a
microcontroller at home that they made themselves that controls the coffee
maker, they will want to be able to connect other stuff around the house up,
and that can only be done with open protocols.

The next few years are going to be very interesting on the maker scene.

~~~
cm2187
Plus standardisation (linux, usb, arm, etc) which I understand was one thing
lacking in the 80s.

~~~
jacquesm
The standard was pretty simple in the 80's, > 3 V = 1, anything below that
counts as a 0.

------
cconcepts
Amazing. If only I'd get my act together and do all the amazing stuff I
planned when I bought my first pi - then I could justify buying this

~~~
girishso
Two years after buying mine, I put the pi to a good use only last week! Now I
am using it as ad-blocker thanks to [http://pi-hole.net/](http://pi-
hole.net/), works like a charm.

I ported the web interface for pi-hole to Go single executable
([https://github.com/girishso/pi-hole-web](https://github.com/girishso/pi-
hole-web))

Now looking for something interesting to do on my second pi!

Edit: Added pi-hole-web link.

~~~
bambax
That's great, thanks!!

I have a pi as a media server* connected to a projector via HDMI, that reads
media files from a NAS on my home network; very efficient and lightweight.

I will definitely try pi-hole; maybe I can have both running on the same pi.

* via Raspbmc, which I just found out has apparently ceased to exist...

~~~
simon_vetter
> * via Raspbmc, which I just found out has apparently ceased to exist...

Try OSMC [1], it's a massive improvement over Raspbmc and is being developed
actively. Works like a charm. If I'm correct, the main Raspbmc dev went over
to OSMC a while back.

[1] [https://osmc.tv](https://osmc.tv)

~~~
pjc50
My frequently asked question: if I want to watch and record DVB-T television,
what media centre solution should I be using?

~~~
unfocused
I have been running the Pi since 2012 from the early days of Raspbmc to OSMC
and sometime in 2013 starting watching and recording television using it.

I have ATSC (North American Over-The-Air TV) which is similar to DVB-T. I use
an HDHomerun Network TV tuner. I watch using my Pi running OSMC and an Add-on
for DVBLink, and when I select record, I use DVBLink software which runs on my
Synology NAS. DVBLink however is paid software that can run on the Pi, as well
as many other platforms (Windows, Linux, Asustor, Netgear, QNAP, Synology,
Western Digital).

I tried using TVHeadend but found the interface and support of DVBLink to be
better.

My other Pi currently runs Volumio
([https://volumio.org](https://volumio.org)) for music streaming.

------
rockmeamedee
This is great, but for people who want to "get started in computing", don't
they also need a display, a mouse and a keyboard?

LCD screens are like, $100, a mouse is $10-$20 new and low-end keyboards are
$10-$30. At that combined price, why does it matter if the computer is $25 or
$5?

And if one is going to outlay the 150 bucks in peripherals, they might as well
spend a bit more than $5 on the computer to get a significantly better
computing experience.

Is there anything else going on here? Do they have a different approach that
I'm not getting? It feels like, yeah, Moore's law is great and computers are
cheap, but once RPi got to around or <$50 (which it did with the first version
anyway), the computer was already cheaper than everything you needed to plug
in to it.

~~~
Xeoncross
There is a lot of peripherals lying around. Even years ago when I didn't have
two pennies to rub together I could still get unwanted keyboards/mice and even
smaller unwanted screens.

On the flip side, I don't need a screen for all my computers. Some are network
devices now (SSH only) and some share the same screen because I use them for
different things at different times.

~~~
pcthrowaway
Right? But there are also plenty of computers with 512 MB of RAM lying around
that you can get for free. And they're 'programmable' too.

~~~
lozf
Physical space, noise, and running costs are also important considerations for
many people.

~~~
Xeoncross
Yes, running this as a useful network device (storage, irc bot, etc..) off a
small solar panel is pretty neat side project.

------
foxpc
Ah well. I recently (a week ago) started a new project with the Arduino and
then they release this beast. It's basically cheaper than an Arduino (except
that there's no storage in the Pi) AND faster than the Arduino.

Sure, it won't have the same IO capabilities as there's much more layers but
it will be pretty close and I don't really need great performance anyways.

I guess, I'll have to switch to the Pi, it's not even a fair race at this
point.

(luckily for me, I was mostly writing the SaaS that would work with the
Arduino and only spent about a full day's work doing C/C++ coding so far)

~~~
smarx007
Well, I would like to note that people on a budget have been buying Arduino
Nano with USB for $2 from eBay for a long time.

~~~
Mchl
Or a clone of SparkFun's ProMicro, which is absolutely awesome. It's basically
Arduino Leonardo (Mega32U4) in the 'micro' form factor and able to work either
on 3.3V or 5V. You can get it at around $3

------
trymas
Next awesome step would be RPi with integrated wifi/bluetooth, and it would
become ultimate IoT/embedded development platform.

Such step would increase price, I know, but AFAIK, most people are almost
always buying either wifi or bluetooth dongles anyway.

All in all, RPi ables to deliver exciting, rather (for me) unexpected and most
importantly great and user-friendly products.

~~~
creshal
You can find zigbee, wifi or bt dongles for $8 or less these days. I suspect
board development costs are the limiting factor for the Foundation here, it's
easier to slap on USB and tell users to plug in what they need.

~~~
trymas
hm, I probably should check now, but were I live (non US), the last time I've
checked zigbee prices started from 19$ :(

But still the best thing will be that:

\- you will not need any dongles

\- can embed your project immediately

\- better compatibility with hardware and software (hopefully) :)

------
Yaggo
Too bad they didn't include camera module connector (CSI). Low-latency
hardware-encoded h264 stream from camera is one of the most cool features in
RPi platform. The Zero would be great e.g. for FPV fying folks, if it
supported camera module. (USB cameras aren't answer here, as they typically
don't have low-latency hw-encoding.)

~~~
intrasight
Yeah, I had hoped for that as well. But connectors cost money. Could the
camera module be attached via the header?

~~~
duskwuff
> Could the camera module be attached via the header?

No. The Raspberry Pi GPIO header doesn't include all pins, and in particular
it doesn't include pins that were used for other peripherals, such as the
camera and display interfaces.

~~~
Yaggo
Interestingly you can get out DPI display signal from GPIO pins. Adafruit is
using this technique with their Kippah display, giving you fully accelerated
display signal (unlike those crappy low-fps-low-res framebuffer driven GPIO
displays).

~~~
duskwuff
Correct. My understanding is that trick was made possible by design -- one of
their engineers specifically chose pins to bring out to the GPIO header to
facilitate it.

I've seen some variants on the "Kippah" to directly drive VGA.

------
robzyb
I just... I don't... I'm a bit lost for words.

The sheer amount of "stuff" you get for $5 (albeit USD) is staggering.

I am designing some simple electronics gadgets for Burning Man, and the
electronics (low-end MSP430 based) for that is costing me a significant
portion of $5 yet its significantly less powerful.

I know, I know, volume is a key issue, but honestly, that doesn't make it any
less impressive to me.

~~~
weland
The Pi foundation being good friends with Broadcom also helps.

------
buserror
Broadcom must be delighted to have managed to find a use for their obsolete
part from 2007 or so. Some accountant, somewhere, is happy :-)

Probably a neat little board too, but unlikely to be $5. It's at £11.88 [0] ex
VAT ex shipping at farnell UK (and can't be ordered anyway) -- that's more
like nearly $20 these days.

[0]: [http://uk.farnell.com/raspberry-pi/raspberrypi-zero/sbc-
zero...](http://uk.farnell.com/raspberry-pi/raspberrypi-zero/sbc-
zero/dp/2508221)

~~~
icebraining
It's £4 in the Pi Hut (disabling the extras):
[http://thepihut.com/products/raspberry-pi-
zero](http://thepihut.com/products/raspberry-pi-zero)

~~~
buserror
Nice one, they are not too extortionate on the 'essential kit' either.

That pi zero might become an alternative (for me) to the Olinuxino Micro [0]
and the NanoPi [1] -- these are ARM9 based so even more dated than the Pi
Zero; however I can boot these two in 0.7 seconds to an application, so
they've been the first draft of quite a few professional projects for me...

[0]:
[https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/iMX233/iMX233-OLin...](https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/iMX233/iMX233-OLinuXino-
NANO/open-source-hardware) [1]:
[http://nanopi.org/NanoPi_Feature.html](http://nanopi.org/NanoPi_Feature.html)

------
schappim
The Specs:

\- A Broadcom BCM2835 application processor

\- 1GHz ARM11 core (40% faster than Raspberry Pi 1)

\- 512MB of LPDDR2 SDRAM

\- A micro-SD card slot

\- A mini-HDMI socket for 1080p60 video output

\- Micro-USB sockets for data and power

\- An unpopulated 40-pin GPIO header

\- Identical pinout to Model A+/B+/2B

\- An unpopulated composite video header

\- Our smallest ever form factor, at 65mm x 30mm x 5mm

Source: [http://raspberry.piaustralia.com.au/products/raspberry-pi-
ze...](http://raspberry.piaustralia.com.au/products/raspberry-pi-zero)

~~~
david-given
Don't forget, also, that the ARM11 in the BCM2835 is actually just a secondary
processor; the main CPU is a blisteringly fast dual-core Videocore 4, which
lots of interesting DSPish and vector processing instructions. (You can call
out to it from the ARM.)

See:
[http://maazl.de/project/vc4asm/doc/index.html](http://maazl.de/project/vc4asm/doc/index.html)

And if you're into shader programming, the GPU has a 24 GFLOP shader unit.

[https://github.com/hermanhermitage/videocoreiv-
qpu](https://github.com/hermanhermitage/videocoreiv-qpu)

Only suitable for very specialised purposes, but astonishingly fast.

------
mschuster91
I'd like an updated Compute Module. Given how small the Pi Zero is, it should
be doable to fit it inside the layout and with the connectors of a MiniPCIe
board (though, of course not with the pinout).

Also, the compute module has support for USB Slave mode but there is no
documentation for this - I'd like to see some expansion in this area as well.

Or choosing of a CPU with a MII interface to allow _real_ GBit or, heck,
fiber/powerline/wifi adapters...

~~~
Natanael_L
Same here. What I'm fantasizing about is a kit with a set of compute modules
in a "tower stack" with a power supply, with horizontally oriented boards
stacked on the height, with all compute modules connected to ports in the
tower.

And you could choose where the pin-outs leads - either straight out to connect
to some electronics on the outside, or straight down to a router in the
bottom.

Then you could dedicate some pins on all boards to link to the router, making
for a small compact HPC setup (easy to ventilate too) and connect stuff like
per-module LED rows for module status info and whatever else you might like.

Bonus point for a "split" tower with modules on both sides, folding down like
some toolboxes do:
[https://www.howdentools.com/data/howden/ul/1406847600/140933...](https://www.howdentools.com/data/howden/ul/1406847600/1409331356b2885a151f3a0c2bea69246f9f1356c4.jpg)

~~~
pjc50
What's this stack for? I'd be very surprised if it beat PC hardware + GPU for
MIPS or FLOPS per $ or watt.

~~~
VLM
Agreed for a supercomputer design it would be awful, but for a stereotypical
99.9999% CPU idle applications, the big win would be total cost of ownership /
capex.

On a long term view from many decades of observation, the digital world is
bifurcating into one world thats 100% utilized all the time in data centers or
real time control or video gaming, and another world that's 99.999% idle but
when its active the users want it infinitely fast. And the two worlds don't
talk or cross pollinate and are gradually using separate hardware.

Having spent some time in electronics labs, given experimental results with
smoke emitting diodes, and given the GPIO ports, there is minimization of the
total cost of hardware experiments. If you assume 5% of boards will be
destroyed per PID/motion control lab, then minimization of board cost is key
to minimization of cost of running the lab. Implementing a PC that costs 20
times as much but provides 100 times the performance would only result in
increasing the cost of the lab by 20 times.

There is also a total wattage ecological argument. I have a pi running a 3-d
printer and it works great and only draws a couple watts, but the web
application is extremely fat and pointlessly featureful "because the cycles
are there so may as well use them" and its not like installing a 100 watt PC
would make better prints, it would just make an even more elaborate UI to use
all available CPU cycles thus burn more coal. A 300 watt tor node doesn't
really do anything a 3 watt tor node does, other than burn 100 times the coal.

~~~
pjc50
Most of this is the case for using _one_ Pi, but not a stack of Pies. Unless
you have some sort of micro-AWS which turns off the 99% unused ones. Ten
boards drawing 100mW at idle are the same as one board drawing 1W at idle.

~~~
pm90
Except that when one board fails out of 10, there are 9 others still alive
whereas in the other case you are toast.

~~~
reitzensteinm
I would expect the complexities of distributing a workload over 10 boards
would result in downtime far exceeding that of a single more powerful machine
left doing its thing, for all but a few highly battle tested applications.

A fair accounting includes the fragility of software, not just hardware.

------
jws
\- 1ghz arm11 (40% faster than original pi)

\- 512MB ram

\- HDMI

\- Micro-usb

\- Micro-SD

\- 40 pin GPIO

[https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/raspberry-pi-
zero/](https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/raspberry-pi-zero/)

------
jwr
I learned to take these pricing claims with a large grain of salt. $5 sounds
great and makes for great news. But then I head over to Farnell/element14 and
learn that a) this is unobtainium, because the first shipment is expected on
Dec 21, and b) it will cost me $17 + VAT + shipping.

The title should say "the computer that _might_ be available to _some people_
at $5 at _some time in the future_ ".

~~~
atmosx
The TCO for something that can operate similarly to a computer, should be
around 50 USD (micro-USB cable, HDMI cable, eth/wlan adapter, case).

But all in all it's an impressive little machine that can do wonders for small
home/school projects.

~~~
smarx007
Don't be ridiculous. $5 will get you 80% of these peripherals from eBay.
Especially if you're on the budget.

~~~
teh_klev
Sure if you fancy the risk of your house going up in flames because you bought
some dodgy no-name power supply knocked out in a Chinese electronics
sweatshop.

~~~
TeMPOraL
How big is that a risk, though? Serious question - because I'm really
considering using Chinese USB power supply units as power sources for my home
automation project. I've been using one of those units for the last 5 days
with no visible problems - no overheating, no noise, etc.

~~~
fulafel
For that application it is better to get officially imported ones (eg. CE-
marked in Europe), where at least the importer is vouching that the design
meets minimum safety requirements.

See [http://www.righto.com/2012/10/a-dozen-usb-chargers-in-lab-
ap...](http://www.righto.com/2012/10/a-dozen-usb-chargers-in-lab-apple-
is.html) for some horror stories about crap USB chargers.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Mine[0] has CE on the back, but this is China, they print anything and
everything on the back...

[0] -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10632118](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10632118)

~~~
deadfish
CE stands for Chinese Engineering :D

~~~
radiorental
Close.. I believe it actually is 'Chinese Export' when you ask but the goal is
the same, to imply certification (o;

------
aorth
Fantastic development, but I can't help but think about the years of pain
we're going to be in security wise when people inevitably start using these
for all sorts of "Internet of Things" purposes. Software stacks on these type
of devices inevitably have lackluster cipher suites, sub-par protocol support,
unpatched kernel/userland, etc—even if they run all the latest things out
right now, they WILL get out of date and WILL NOT receive patches!

~~~
rdancer
Not sure what you mean by "these type of devices", but you will be overjoyed
that on Raspbian, updating the system is as easy as `apt-get udate && apt-get
-y upgrade`, the kernel is currently v4.1.13 [1], and the rest of your comment
is also FUD.

[1]
[https://github.com/raspberrypi/firmware/blob/master/boot/ker...](https://github.com/raspberrypi/firmware/blob/master/boot/kernel.img)

~~~
Tepix
I wouldn't call it FUD. Embedded devices tend to get updated less frequently
than PCs. Connecting them all to the internet is not helping.

~~~
rorykoehler
If security is an issue set it up to run a system cron job to update.

------
frigo_1337
I don't see anything about Ethernet/Wi-Fi. Am I missing something?

I understand they had to cut some features to reduce the prize. But networking
is such a fundamental requirement for these types of systems, you'd think that
it would be the last feature to be excluded.

~~~
TD-Linux
The networking on the other Pis is attached via USB. It's a very easy and
obvious thing to drop.

~~~
frigo_1337
Yeah I guess.

Still, I for one would be more than willing to pay a few extra bucks for a
stripped-down version of the Pi with wireless included.

Actually, all I'm looking for in this type of machine is Linux, Wi-Fi and
GPIO, in a reasonably compact format. Maybe the Pi isn't a good fit, since it
is more about "teaching computing" than "building your IoT stuff".

------
castell

      The Zero, which like its predecessors is being manufactured in Wales
    

I have an original RPI made in China. That was right before the made them in
UK, as far as I remember.

The Zero would need an Ethernet-port addon-board.

And for further RPI 2 iterations they should move the power-connector to a
different position (e.g. like the original RPI) - would be better for headless
embedded projects with limited space. Having the Ethernet and power cable on
the same (or opposite) side would be a great benefit.

~~~
Kurtz79
For 5 bucks it's fine without an Ethernet controller.

I'm all for bare minimum functionality at this price.

If you want connectivity there are plenty of options available:

\- buying its "big" brothers instead

\- use a USB to Ethernet adapter

\- Buy a wireless dongle ([http://thepihut.com/products/raspberry-pi-wipi-
wireless-adap...](http://thepihut.com/products/raspberry-pi-wipi-wireless-
adapter))

------
jgowans42
I find the lack of ethernet or wifi concerning. I get that they're trying to
keep it small and low cost, but I can't immediately see any use for a Pi that
can't run standalone.

~~~
sklogic
It's easy to imagine multiple simple designs. You can couple it with an
ESP2866, for example, using a number of attinys to access their analog inputs,
or with a CAN-SPI head collecting data from multiple sensors, processing and
then reporting through an ESP2866.

~~~
Tepix
The ESP8266 is quite slow, network wise. You could hook up the sensors to the
Pi Zero directly using the GPIO ports and use a cheap USB WiFi adapter to
upload the data.

~~~
sklogic
I guess it would be harder to power an USB WiFi adapter. And it's not going to
be cheaper than ESP2866.

~~~
Tepix
Actually a 802.11n USB adapter costs $1.55, that's cheaper than a ESP8266.

~~~
sklogic
The cheapest I could find was around £2.50. I could never run one with RPi
without a powered USB hub, so add at least £5 more.

------
abdelhadikhiati
Raspberry still costs more than 100$ in my country, due the rarity of such
tools sometimes we found ourselves obliged to buy it with that price and pay
the difference, and even though this is such a great step, i really doubt it
would have any effect on 3rd world countries where this is really needed.

~~~
danpeddle
Why the huge difference in costs..? International shipping..?

~~~
privong
I suspect it's due to the combination of low sales volumes and import taxes.
Here in Chile, Pi B's are around $50–60. Though to be fair, traditional PCs
and laptops are more expensive than in the US (but not 2x as expensive).

~~~
pjc50
I know Brazil has prohibitive import duties on electronics, does this also
apply to Chile?

~~~
forinti
But books, magazines, etc. don't pay taxes. That's why this free Rpi with
MagPi #40 is awesome: you don't have to pay taxes at all.

~~~
privong
> But books, magazines, etc. don't pay taxes. That's why this free Rpi with
> MagPi #40 is awesome: you don't have to pay taxes at all.

I assume you mean in Brazil? Books and very expensive in Chile, compared to
other things. And I believe it's because they are heavily taxed. I don't know
about magazines, though.

~~~
forinti
Yes, I meant Brazil.

------
RohithMeethal
It is so sad that when it comes to India price is increased to $18
[http://www.element14.com/community/docs/DOC-79263](http://www.element14.com/community/docs/DOC-79263)

~~~
zuron7
That's because they're throwing in a HDMI cable as well as an OTG cable.

------
atmosx
Quick specs for those who don't wanna click on the article:

    
    
      A Broadcom BCM2835 application processor
      1GHz ARM11 core (40% faster than Raspberry Pi 1)
      512MB of LPDDR2 SDRAM
      1 x micro-SD card slot
      1 x mini-HDMI socket for 1080p60 video output
      Micro-USB sockets for data and power
      Unpopulated 40-pin GPIO header
      Identical pinout to Model A+/B+/2B
      Size: 65mm x 30mm x 5mm

------
em3rgent0rdr
Free Raspberry Pi Zero with the magazine, wow!

"Zero" is a great model name, since the price is negligible (approximately
equal to 0 for most purposes).

------
nl
$5 is an amazing price for something so functional.

The current go-to device for semi-disposable network-attached devices is the
ESP8266, which was supposed to be a WiFi add-on board for the Arduino until
someone ported Lua to run on it[2]. That is ~$3, but nowhere near as
functional as the Pi Zero.

[1] [https://batilanblog.wordpress.com/2015/04/27/first-
experienc...](https://batilanblog.wordpress.com/2015/04/27/first-experiences-
with-the-lua-nodemcu-esp8266-based-wifi-network-development-board/)

[2] [http://nodemcu.com/index_en.html](http://nodemcu.com/index_en.html)

------
trymas
That's great.

Personally, one of the downsides of the original RPi (and RPi 2 as well), was
it's , believe it or not, size.

Sometimes I wanted to have some portable embedded projects, for which small
micro-controller would not be enough, but RPi, was 10 times bigger.

But it's just my personal nitpick, overall RPi devices, community and it's
ecosystem is just great.

------
Aissen
Just as CHIP was announcing their $8 computer:
[http://getchip.com/](http://getchip.com/) . It has wifi and bluetooth though.
Same as Pi, watch for high shipping costs.

~~~
agumonkey
And 4GB of flash on SoC, also apparently some direct support for LiPO
batteries. Not that I really understand it but makes the $9,$8 fair compared
to the $5 pizero.

------
rwmj
I know I'm complaining about an almost free computer, but ARM11 (ARMv6) isn't
compatible with most Linux OSes which long ago moved to ARMv7. If only this
was compatible with ARMv7 it would run a lot more stuff.

~~~
edent
Not sure I understand. I runs Debian derivatives like Raspian, Ubuntu, and
Kali. If you're a masochist it'll run Windows 10 IoT core.

[https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/](https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/)

[https://www.offensive-security.com/kali-linux/raspberry-
pi-l...](https://www.offensive-security.com/kali-linux/raspberry-pi-luks-disk-
encryption/)

~~~
Asmod4n
The only modern distro it runs is Raspbian. Ubuntu and Kali don't run on it
let alone Windows 10 IoT core, same goes for Arch and pretty much everything
else.

This is a ARMv6, for which most distros stopped support several years ago if
they ever ran on it.

~~~
ac29
Arch will definitely run on a Pi:

[http://archlinuxarm.org/platforms/armv6/raspberry-
pi](http://archlinuxarm.org/platforms/armv6/raspberry-pi)

So will Win10 IOT core, Ubuntu, and several other things:

[https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/](https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/)

~~~
Asmod4n
Win10 IOT core needs ARMv7. The latest Ubuntu with ARMv6 support was karmic
(9.10) Forgot about arch Supporting ARMv6.

------
spencertg1
Love the whole raspberry pi mission. I wonder if in 10+ years time we'll see
the children learning on it today generating a growth surge in
"middle(young)-aged hobbyists"? We all hear about the heyday of the homebrew
computer club, maybe the future waves of innovation will be from the "homebrew
raspberry pi club". Here's to hoping!!

------
woodson
Somewhat disappointing that in Australia RPi Zero costs AU$19.38 (plus
AU$12.95 shipping). Quite a lot more than US$5 (=AU$6.93).

~~~
kelt
$19.29 over here in SGD :<

wished it had wifi tho

------
StavrosK
By the way, if you get a bunch of these and want to have them communicate with
other devices and themselves in a secure manner, I wrote a library to do just
that:

[http://www.stavros.io/posts/introducing-string-
phone/](http://www.stavros.io/posts/introducing-string-phone/)

Feedback appreciated!

------
sawwit
Someone made this nice comparison over on Reddit:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/3uc55k/58_years_on/](https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/3uc55k/58_years_on/)

------
visakanv
This is awesome. I wonder what the next iteration will be? Will they
eventually start giving out Raspberry Pis for free?

~~~
dkx
They already have:
[https://www.raspberrypi.org/magpi/](https://www.raspberrypi.org/magpi/)

~~~
codeshaman
It's out of stock :(

~~~
merah
It's flying off the shelves, had to vist three news outlets to find one! I got
a spare one for a family member too, but if they change their mind I'll gladly
post to a UK address.

------
lamby
The "$5 computer" is, of course, £4 in the UK.
[http://pimoroni.com/zero](http://pimoroni.com/zero)

~~~
jenscow
Without VAT, it's about $5 [0]

[0]
[https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=%28100%2F%28100%2B20%29+*+...](https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=%28100%2F%28100%2B20%29+*+4%29+gbp+in+usd)

~~~
bratch
Indeed, I just purchased one from
[https://shop.pimoroni.com/](https://shop.pimoroni.com/) for £3.33. Alas, it
was £3.00 for shipping.

------
metral
Amazing news to see this! I made a Homemade Sports Ticker using a Model B
almost 1.5 years ago and its still going strong.

Here's a couple of links:

* Blog post: [https://medium.com/@mikemetral/a-homemade-sports-ticker-875c...](https://medium.com/@mikemetral/a-homemade-sports-ticker-875c73a5339)

* Code to write to LED Sign: [https://github.com/metral/led_sign](https://github.com/metral/led_sign)

* Code to pull the scores: [https://github.com/metral/scores](https://github.com/metral/scores)

* The LED sign itself: [http://brightledsigns.com/programmable/indoor/bs-4x16-mini](http://brightledsigns.com/programmable/indoor/bs-4x16-mini)

Fair Warning: I haven't touched the code in over a year so it's not
maintained. If I were to do things today, I'd probably switch to Go to make
the score requests a bit more streamlined than the single synchronous process
I have now, and I would throw it into a container as the #1 request I get is
people struggling to install both the code base and the dependencies.

Happy Hacking!

~~~
prokes
That's cool man, I'm sure you're friend was stoked. Props on the write up.
I've got an old monitor I want to connect to the Pi, just not sure what info
is worth displaying yet.

------
solipsism
I'd like to get into this world. At this point I don't have enough experience
or knowledge to know what kinds of things I can do with this thing. Or what
kinds of things this is more appropriate for compared to a Raspberry Pi 2, or
vice versa. Any pointers?

Could I make some kind of driver/controller for a small synchronized christmas
light show with this? Or some kind of toy with lights and sounds for my
toddlers?

~~~
foxpc
Yes and yes. Obviously, you will need a bit more hardware than only a
Raspberry Pi.

The simplest one I found is here: [http://opensource.com/life/15/2/music-
light-show-with-raspbe...](http://opensource.com/life/15/2/music-light-show-
with-raspberry-pi)

And there's plenty of other results on 'raspberry christmas lights'.

------
javipas
Even without the Ethernet connector this is impressive. Yes, you should add
the microSD, cables and peripherals cost, but even adding that the RPi Zero is
a marvel.

[http://theunshut.com/2015/11/26/raspberry-pi-
zero-5-dollar-m...](http://theunshut.com/2015/11/26/raspberry-pi-
zero-5-dollar-micro-pc/)

It’s amazing what you can do with $5.

------
SarahofGaia
> Today, I’m pleased to be able to announce the immediate availability of
> Raspberry Pi Zero, made in Wales and priced at just $5.

I'm confused: they say it's $5 but at Adafruit (one of the places where
USAians can buy it), the cheapest are the Raspberry Pi Zero Starter Pack and
the Raspberry Pi Zero Budget Pack, priced at $59.95 and $29.95, respectively.

~~~
jedahan
It's $5 at Adafruit. The starter pack has a whole bunch of stuff you might
want for your first Pi, but probably can scrounge around for free or cheaper.

~~~
SarahofGaia
If it's $5 at Adafruit, then how come it doesn't show it? Most of the time a
store will list something even if it's out of stock, but will just put a
sticker on the entry that says "Out of stock".

~~~
j4d3
The $5 standalone was on their site yesterday morning with an "Out of stock"
label. I suspect I wasn't the only person who was annoyed to see that listed
next to the bundles, and they removed it because complaining.

I still bought a bundle, because I haven't found any other way to get this in
the next few weeks, and the board plus a few basics will be a great <$10 white
elephant gift (after I see if I want to keep it for myself).

~~~
SarahofGaia
I was only considering buying it myself _because_ it was only $5. I've been
needing a new computer. Lol.

------
xuhu
To what degree are the power requirements on their faq still valid for the pi
zero ?
[https://www.raspberrypi.org/help/faqs/#power](https://www.raspberrypi.org/help/faqs/#power)

The question I really want to ask is, how long will a 1.2A supply last with
nothing else attached to it ?

~~~
teraflop
Your question isn't meaningful, because amps are a measure of the rate at
which a power supply can provide current.

An AA battery can provide 1.2A for maybe an hour or two; a wall wart can
provide 1.2A indefinitely.

~~~
aldanor
He most probably meant 1.2Ah

------
bootload
Blown away with this. As a youngster cutting my teeth on Cambridge based
computers, great to see a Welsh machine. Currently using RPis for most of my
development, I'm working on a design for a RP laptop. Not hard, but I did want
to thrown in multiple boards. This looks to be one way to achieve this.
Technical details (cant seem to find any power requirements) and tour here
from adafruit:

\- [https://learn.adafruit.com/introducing-the-raspberry-pi-
zero...](https://learn.adafruit.com/introducing-the-raspberry-pi-
zero?view=all)

\-
[https://www.adafruit.com/products/2885](https://www.adafruit.com/products/2885)

~~~
listic
Do you want to have multiple boards in a laptop? In that case, it would be
great to have high-speed interconnect between them, I guess.

------
wiradikusuma
I _just_ received "Black Friday promo" from chip
([http://getchip.com/](http://getchip.com/)) which claim to sell s/$9/$8
computer. I wonder how they fare with this new RPi.

------
pavlov
A single transistor cost several dollars in 1950. A full-blown 1GHz computer
is now the same price (cheaper even, accounting for inflation).

What will $5 buy in 2080? It's going to be a billion times faster than this,
but it's hard to imagine the form factor.

~~~
timc3
It will buy you hours of virtual computing power somewhere...

~~~
jacquesm
Yes, but how will you interface that virtual computing power to an led, a
switch, a relay or a ntc?

------
ck2
$5 price tag makes sense now considering you can buy a full smartphone for
that much now:

[http://www.bestbuy.com/site/net10-zte-paragon-4g-with-4gb-
me...](http://www.bestbuy.com/site/net10-zte-paragon-4g-with-4gb-memory-no-
contract-cell-phone-black/4297500.p)

(just don't try to order more than two or hours later your order will be
canceled)

or

[http://www.bestbuy.com/site/verizon-wireless-prepaid-
motorol...](http://www.bestbuy.com/site/verizon-wireless-prepaid-motorola-
moto-e-4g-with-8gb-memory-no-contract-cell-phone-with-blue-grip-case-
black/4407800.p)

------
tlrobinson
This is neat, but I'd rather see a $10-$15 board with onboard WiFi.

------
mingodad
I just bought 2 magpi to get 2 raspiberry pi zero but connecting then to a
android charger (without and with sdcard
[http://director.downloads.raspberrypi.org/raspbian_lite/imag...](http://director.downloads.raspberrypi.org/raspbian_lite/images/raspbian_lite-2015-11-24/2015-11-21-raspbian-
jessie-lite.zip)) none of then lights the green led to indicate power on.

Someone have a different experience or can tell something about this ?

~~~
mrob
I bought a copy of MagPi, and my Raspberry Pi Zero does not light up when I
apply power. But if I connect it to my PC with a USB cable the Broadcom
BCM2708 Boot device is detected, so I assume it is working. I haven't tested
with SDcard present.

~~~
mingodad
Yes I also did connect to my linux laptop and it also detects the Broadcom
BCM2708. I was expecting to be able to connect it to a linux box via usb as it
is and open a ssh connection through tty but they didn't made it that easy
it's a shame.

------
kgs42
Hi, maybe not entirely relevant for this topic - but maybe you guys have any
idea how to build and cheap system which will gather temperature wireleslly to
one place. Ideally I'd like to have 2 sensors (one inside and other outside,
with own batteries) which will send data to some central device.

I have home server on MacMini - so WiFi could be option. Any ideas?

I've always wanted to build something like this which - but always ended
calculations that are rather expensive and devices are relatively big.

~~~
gedrap
How about running a http server on the mac exposing restful api, and using
something like ESP8266 + temperature sensor, sending basic http requests to
the server every minute or so? Should be much cheaper than arduino.

~~~
kgs42
but I have to connect ESP8266 to something (Arduino?) or is it standalone
device?

~~~
gedrap
standalone :) some inspirations for you
[http://hackaday.com/2015/09/05/esp8266-web-server-
farm/](http://hackaday.com/2015/09/05/esp8266-web-server-farm/)
[http://www.instructables.com/id/ESP8266-Wifi-Temperature-
Log...](http://www.instructables.com/id/ESP8266-Wifi-Temperature-Logger/)

If you end up working on it, feel free drop me an email, I'm really curious
about the result :)

~~~
kgs42
ok, thanks :)

~~~
tzs
Be careful with that "Instructables" article. The author powers the ESP8266
from the Arduino's 3.3V power out pin. The ESP8266 can want to use more
current than the Arduino is rated to supply.

I've looked at a few "Instructables" articles on ESP8266 and Arduino, and a
large fraction of them seem to have this issue.

Another issue many of them that use a 5V Arduino have is that they ignore the
difference between the logic levels of the 5V Arduino and the 3.3V ESP8266.
For the connection from the ESP8266 UART Tx to the Arduino Rx, that's probably
fine. The ESP8266 will drive the line to 3.3v, and that is high enough for the
Arduino to recognize it as high on the Rx line, as long as you are powering
the Arduino through the USB port or through the barrel jack (I'm using Arduino
Uno for my examples, so some adjustment may be needed for other models).

If you are powering through the 5V pin, which bypasses the 5V regulator on the
Arduino, then you could have a problem if your voltage is high. The minimum
voltage seen as a logic 1 on the input pins goes up as supply voltage goes up,
and since you are already near the edge when hooking an 3.3V ESP8266 up
directly, you have to be careful.

For the connection the other way, Arduino UART Tx to ESP8266 UART Rx, you are
putting a 5V signal on a pin that's supposed to only take up to 3.3V. The
ESP8266 has built-in protection against over-voltage which probably will save
you, but this is not good practice.

Simplest fix here is to use a 1k and 2k resistor to make a voltage divider for
the Arduino Tx -> ESP8266 Rx signal. Note that this only works for going from
the higher voltage side to the lower voltage side. That's fine here, since on
the Tx->Rx connection only the Tx side drives the line.

If you have to hook different voltage I/O pins together and both sides can
drive, you need something more elaborate. There's a cool solution that uses
two resistors and a MOSFET. That, and some others, is given here [1].

[1] [http://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/97889/is-
ther...](http://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/97889/is-there-any-
bidirectional-5v-3-3v-level-shifter)

------
zaf
All sold out!

Wanted the MagPI Magazine with a free RPi Zero but its sold out!

------
cdnsteve
When I see $5 all I can think about is a massive cluster of these working
together with something like Apache Mesos
([http://mesos.apache.org/](http://mesos.apache.org/)). The Raspberry Pi Zero,
due to low cost, low power requirements (Around the 160mA mark (0.5/0.7W!) and
small form factor, could be the future of data centres.

You could literally build a _100Ghz_ machine for $500.

------
mhandley
For me, the best thing about this is not the price. It's the combination of
small form factor and no Ethernet/USB hub. With the original Pi, almost half
the power consumption came from the USB hub/Ethernet controller chip - this
was always the main advantage of the Model A, which could be very useful for
small robots. I would assume the Zero shares that advantage, while being
smaller, faster, and more RAM.

------
kevindeasis
This is intriguing.

Is there a list somewhere that shows the cheapest possible place to get
raspberry hardware modules.

Also, where do you guys buy your modules? You can include Arduino stuff.

~~~
foxpc
I just use eBay for Arduino stuff. It's a bit more expensive than AliExpress
but I suppose I get a bit more buyer protection.

This screen* is pretty cheap, right? I'm currently using one (on an Arduino,
different seller) and it works great.

* [http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/2004-204-20x4-Character-LCD-Displa...](http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/2004-204-20x4-Character-LCD-Display-Module-HD44780-Controller-Blue-Blacklight-/181924103697?hash=item2a5b858611:g:TGMAAOSw5VFWPEpl)

~~~
kevindeasis
That's really cheap compared to where I got mine along time ago. Very Cool!

~~~
foxpc
If you don't mind waiting for a month or so (depends on your location), you
probably won't find anything cheaper unless you live in China/Singapore or buy
bulk :)

------
harel
The MagPi magazine comes with a Raspberry Pi Zero, like the old floppies of
the 90s. The lady at WHSmith told me they run out as soon as it got in today.

------
davidone_f
Any place where could I find this magazine, guys? Tried in Liverpool Street /
Moorgate (WHSmith / Waterstone) with no luck.

~~~
seabee
Couldn't find it in those places in two other locations in outer London. Would
be nice to have a list of stockists!

------
vonklaus
Does it make sense to run your own hardware again? If you leased rackspace at
a provider, you could just have tiny clusters of these everywhere for each
service and pay virtually nothing. You could have it triple redundant and have
it configured however you wanted.

Edit: it was a dif time, but wasnt that hiw google got started? Tgey just
bought a ton of hardware.

~~~
geerlingguy
Like [http://www.pidramble.com/](http://www.pidramble.com/) \- running in my
basement right now, but it's comparable in performance (for many workloads) to
a cluster of t2.micro instances.

------
eddd
I am no Rasberry expect, so I need to ask: Is it possible to connect Rassbery
Zero to some network in some convenient way?

~~~
thawkins
Something like this would probaly work well, you would probaly be able to hack
it and put tbe pi inside.

[http://www.dx.com/p/combo-usb-2-0-lan-ethernet-
adapter-3-por...](http://www.dx.com/p/combo-usb-2-0-lan-ethernet-
adapter-3-port-hub-for-tablet-pc-dark-grey-147462#.VleeZWiwrMI)

------
facepalm
What I would like to know more about is how to power these gadgets. Say I want
a sensor that sends data to a server. Do I need to plug it into a power
outlet? Can I run it off a battery for a significant amount of time (months)?
Can I use solar power? How much power does WiFi consume, or should I look into
Bluetooth or ZigBee?

~~~
teraflop
> Can I run it off a battery for a significant amount of time (months)?

Depends on how big a battery you're willing to use. In the other thread,
someone claimed that the Pi Zero's typical power consumption is about 0.8
watts, so running it for a month would require about 600 watt-hours. That's
roughly the energy content of one car battery, or ten Macbook batteries, or
about 230 alkaline AAs. A USB wifi adapter would probably add another
0.5-1.0W.

The Raspberry Pi isn't a great option for this kind of long-term low-power
application, because it doesn't really have any power management capabilities
to speak of. If you can get by with a low duty cycle, you could use additional
components to wake up the Pi only when necessary. Less-powerful
microcontrollers are more likely to have this functionality built in; for
example, TI's Tiva series of ARM Cortex-M4F chips have a "hibernate" mode in
which they can draw as little as 5 _microwatts_.

> Can I use solar power?

Again, it depends. A solar panel that can provide ~1W is not very large or
expensive, but that's the rated output under direct sunlight. The actual power
available could easily be 10x lower if it's cloudy, or 100x lower under very
bright indoor lighting. And presumably you'll still want a battery and
charging circuitry to keep things running at light or in low light. It's
certainly doable, but the power supply will end up costing a lot more than the
Pi itself.

~~~
facepalm
Thanks!

------
iM8t
Is there any way to buy these from Europe?

~~~
sagischwarz
The article mentions three vendors in UK. I just ordered mine from
[http://pimoroni.com/zero](http://pimoroni.com/zero) (they accept Bitcoin).

~~~
iM8t
Thanks! Just ordered mine. Looking forward to learning with it.

Do you have any good bookmarks that You could share with a complete beginner?

~~~
sagischwarz
It's also my first Pi, more of an impulse buy. Have to find out what to do
with it.

------
CJefferson
I suspect this is in competition to the currently-being-released Micro Bit,
the BBC's similar tiny computer (The microbit isn't aimed at the same market,
as it has buttons and LEDs built onto it, and no HDMI. But it is threatening
to push the Raspberry Pi out of UK schools).

------
mentos
What speakers/mic/battery/wifi dongle would be best to pair with this if I
wanted to make my own open version of the Amazon Echo?

I could see printing a 3D shell and selling a kit for $20 with the appeal of
users being able to easily break it down if they wanted to repurpose the RPi.

------
gloves
Jack Lang, Chairman of Raspberry Pi gave a fascinating talk about how the Pi
came to be at Business of Software Europe last year. (really is worth 33
minutes of your time)

[https://vimeo.com/136196471](https://vimeo.com/136196471)

------
harperlee
So for the price of a $1000 pc I could get 200 of these. What would be great
experiments for them?

~~~
giarc
>What would be great experiments for them?

Donating them to school computer clubs and seeing what teenagers do with them.

~~~
harperlee
Well, if I were to use that hypothetical $1000 to help others, I think there
would be more efficient ways to use them than donating RPis... my question was
trying to point to technological discussion! But thanks for the suggestion
nonetheless :P

In the mean time, I found out about Beowulf clusters, highly interesting!

------
Leuli
It would be nice if there was an interface to solder on one of these dirt
cheap wifi modules. SPI?

~~~
carey
There are serial-to-wifi modules for the Arduino; surely one of them would
work on the RPi header, though you might need some new software to forward the
network packets to it.

------
xzion
I was really hope they refresh the R-Pi compute module at a pricepoint like
this.

------
agumonkey
Cute form factor, let's have pizero hats (battery, lcd, foo).

ps: too late, they're call phats
[http://pimoroni.com/zero](http://pimoroni.com/zero) (stupid me)

------
agumonkey
Beside the product himself, thumbs up at the whole team. From a funny project
to a very famous name and large community. I can imagine Eben and his friends
surprise.

------
linuxkerneldev
Nice. Interesting design choice to not have ethernet on it.

~~~
happycube
Ethernet is handled by an extra chip that also provides the USB hub function.
This is wired up like the model A(+) which also doesn't have Ethernet.

------
kubiiii
I immediately ordered one. It does not have a camera port though, I hoped
there were ways to operate the camera through the GPIO but could not find
anything.

~~~
Yaggo
It's possible to connect HDMI display to GPIO pins[1]. Maybe similar technique
is also possible with CSI camera connector?

[1]
[http://www.adafruit.com/product/2453](http://www.adafruit.com/product/2453)

------
Hockenbrizzle
Awesome sauce.

I wonder if they plan to make it modular like the folks over at Project Ara
from Google ATAP. That would be a total hit with the Maker community.

~~~
Natanael_L
Like the RPi compute module?

------
api
The Pi is a wonderfully disruptive thing. I think it's a quiet stalking horse
for the second personal computing revolution.

------
gloves
Jack Lang - Chairman of Raspberry Pi gave a great talk at Business of Software
Europe on how RP came to be and its success since.

[http://businessofsoftware.org/2015/11/the-story-of-
raspberry...](http://businessofsoftware.org/2015/11/the-story-of-raspberry-pi-
raspberry-pi-zero-jack-lang-business-of-software-europe-2015-talk/)

------
partiallogic
I picked one up because why not but now I need to also buy several adapters so
that I can use it.

------
Raed667
I'm still bothered by Raspberry Pi's choice not to include WIFI by default in
all/some of its products.

Almost every Raspberry Pi project I have encountered needs some sort of
connectivity and doing this with 3rd party dongles (some don't even work on
most recent versions of Raspbian) is just ridiculous in my opinion.

~~~
pjc50
That raises the CE certification costs considerably.

~~~
Raed667
but if they make like a B2 model + WIFI and just add 10$ to the unit price.
That would cover it.

~~~
VLM
Highly unlikely. For a market as immense as the USA that is way too high. For
small markets it'll never pay the labor and local-FCC-equivalent certification
costs. There would be tradeoffs and other problems; some countries are very
locked down and unamused at the idea of someone telling their wifi they are in
Japan despite being somewhere else thus enabling unusual power and freq
limitations. Small countries and markets would be discriminated against,
likely never getting a pi legally shipped to them, an intentionally avoiding
serving poor people is kind of counter to most of the politics and rhetoric of
the group.

There is a compromise of putting a port on the thing where a locally puchased
wifi dongle could be installed. The port would have to provide power and be
fast enough to be wifi usable. It would be really nice if that port were
popular. The Pi People seem to like community building and a USA distributor
could bundle a USA FCC certified wifi adapter with every board, just plug it
in. That port is called the USB port. So the solution to various
implementation problems devolves into the current situation.

~~~
Raed667
This seems now like a first world problem, a nice guide to find would be like
"Cheap Wifi dongles that work on raspbian".

------
72deluxe
Very interesting! Still loving my early Raspberry Pi boards.

------
jawns
For $5, I'm in. Now: What the heck can I do with it?

~~~
jacquesm
Just about everything you can do with a regular linux computer, if you need
networking you're going to have shell out a couple of bucks for an interface.

Ideal for embedded stuff, computers that you tie to some appliance, robotics,
data acquisition, scada stuff, media players and so on.

------
callesgg
That is pretty great, i do which that it had wifi built in. As generally you
need an Internet connection, and the usb port for a keyboard.

Plugging in a USB hub fixes the issue, but then it would be smarter to just
buy a normal PI.

------
hoodoof
The missing piece to this puzzle is being able to buy these connected to high
speed Internet. Maybe Raspberry Pi build build a data center filled with these
things.

------
mschuster91
Still lacking: USB Device Mode support... :(

~~~
Tepix
The Pi Zero is like the Model A, so device mode should be possible.

See
[https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=98&t=7409...](https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=98&t=74098)

~~~
mschuster91
Interesting.

> The single USB port on the model A is capable of working as a USB slave (OTG
> mode). The model B cannot do that because of the USB hub/LAN chip being in
> the way.

Please, please do not tell me that the Pi CPU has only a single USB
controller?! _facepalm_

------
ausjke
Really need a full-sized USB host port, so you can hook all kinds of
gadget/dongles to it without an odd adapter dangling.

------
davexunit
Does it still require proprietary blobs to function at all? A $5 ARM computer
sounds great, but not if it needs blobs.

~~~
markokrajnc
You can try without a blob:
[https://github.com/hermanhermitage/videocoreiv](https://github.com/hermanhermitage/videocoreiv)

(booting directly from Broadcom VideoCore IV)

~~~
david-given
Even if you write your own VC4 boot code, like a lot of these processors
(including the Allwinner!) there's an onboard boot ROM which is the first
thing which executes.

On the Pi the boot ROM, which runs on the VC4, has enough intelligence to
mount the SD card and load a VC4 executable from there into the internal SRAM.
My understanding is that this initialises the SDRAM, and then loads _another_
VC4 executable, which contains the RTOS which runs alongside Linux. Once
that's up and running it initialises the ARM processor, loads the ARM kernel,
and starts that going.

But you'll _never_ get away from proprietary blobs.

------
Patronus_Charm
This is great, truly impressive.

------
shams93
for me this is my chance to build a cool digital synth with csound at the core

------
ChuckMcM
Pretty awesome price point.

------
suneilp
Sold out at Adafruit which is really the only place to buy it in the US. Life
is sad right now...

------
eccstartup
I want to buy 10.

~~~
rdancer
Go for it!

------
rebootthesystem
To me the most significant event is that of a magazine giving a way a
computer.

For me something like NVidia Jetson is a far more significant (and useful)
development than the ever-shrinking bubblegum stick computers that simply
aren't that useful. Yes, it costs 100x more but there's no comparison when it
comes to what you can do with one.

And, if that's too much, how about something like this for $39 (includes CPU):

[http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157...](http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157594)

or this for $59 (includes CPU):

[http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138...](http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138417)

of this one for $99 with a quad-core 2.4 GHz Intel CPU:

[http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157...](http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157626)

No doubt that a $5 stick computer has huge value for educational purposes and
in some parts of the world it's going to make a HUGE difference. Bravo for
that.

Yet, we still need a keyboard, mouse (maybe) and a screen. Because the Pi Zero
has an HDMI output the cheapest monitor you can buy is likely to be in the $80
to $100 range:

[http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824112...](http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824112027)

In other words, this is great in that now the cost of the computer has become
a rounding error in the total cost of everything you need to actually make it
useful.

In other parts of the world if you are going to be in computing the difference
between spending $5 and spending $100 is zero. If you have an iPhone in your
pocket (very likely) you or your parents can certainly afford to spend $200 on
a computer.

Every single kid in the FRC robotics team I mentor has a smart phone and a
laptop. If they want to hack on some hardware it'd be no problem for their
parents to buy them a $200~$300 setup. You can buy a whole new mini laptop for
that kind of money.

Same token, every single kid in the FLL team I mentor owns one or more Lego
Mindstorms kit at $350 a piece.

Maybe what I am saying is this: What I would see as having more impact in
education (again, the economic in other part of the world are different) isn't
necessarily a cheaper computer. A race to the bottom with a crippled $1
computer isn't what is keeping the kids I interact with from having access to
technology and computing. No, what's keeping them from entering is a lack of
motivation due to a decidedly uninteresting process.

When I was a kid I had to work hard to have a computer. I had to build it out
of chips. Wire-wrap it. Bootstrap it with assembler. Write my own Forth. Write
my own text editor. Learn about electronics and software. Build my own floppy
disk controller board, etc. I was challenged and had to engage in discovery
and there was no internet to hold my hand.

I am not sure what the modern equivalent to this might be. I find that things
like Pi, for some kids, make things so easy that they are bored almost
instantly. Once they get the thing up and going there's nothing to do or
whatever it is they can do gets complicated and messy very quickly.

At the other end of the scale I see kids absolutely ripping it with Scratch on
their laptops. It's fun, interesting and challenging enough with some
guidance.

I don't have the answers. Just a brain dump from working with about 100 kids
of different ages and levels of motivation in two robotics programs.

~~~
rebootthesystem
I wish down-voters would take a moment to explain why they think a $5 crippled
computer is better than a $39 full-featured board.

The context is that, in order to make use of the $5 crippled computer you have
to spend, at a minimum, $100 in a keyboard, mouse monitor and power adapter.

I'm sure someone will say you can build little sprinkler system controllers
and LED light blinkers and all all manner of other little projects.

Well, here's the problem: Why aren't we teaching our kids to do just that with
little $0.50 microcontrollers? Why do we need a HUGE operating system running
a gigahertz to teach or build the simplest things?

Here's a over 1,000 microcontrollers from $0.55 upwards with peripherals
ranging from CAN, I2C, SPI, UART, USB, USB-OTG, A/D, D/A, Timers, Counters,
PWM, WDT, Motor Control, LCD, etc.

[http://goo.gl/Lc5gP6](http://goo.gl/Lc5gP6)

What I see on my end, working with lots of kids, are a bunch of Pi's being
bought only to collect dust. The idea of a super-cheap computer on a bubblegum
stick might be interesting and heart-warming but the reality I see is that the
vast majority of them are bought because of the novelty factor and they set
aside and ignored.

I've had far more success with the kids by adopting a simple little 8 bit
microprocessor and then teaching them how to do all kinds of interesting
things with them in assembler at first and C later.

Their eyes and minds really open up and they gain an understanding that simply
cannot be had by having a bubblegum computer with Linux that comes up to a
command prompt. Worlds apart. And, oh, yes, none of my kids will ever be
confused about pointers, stacks, memory management and a whole host of topics
that confuse those who's first contact with computing is running Python on a
stick computer of some sort...to turn on a sprinklers valve using a bunch of
libraries and megabytes of coder running on a GHz processor.

It's a lot more work as a mentor, but if you really care about the kids and
want them to learn and engage their brains, you can't throw a "done for you"
solution at them.

~~~
walterbell
Bravo. Even more infantilizing are the electronic kits from
[http://littlebits.cc](http://littlebits.cc).

~~~
rebootthesystem
The weak link is always curriculum. Without a "plan" and mentorship kids learn
very little. Sure, they can follow step by step instructions, click things
together but they are learning very little.

Most kids learn nothing about strength of mechanical shapes by clicking
together lego blocks. However, a curriculum that explicitly teaches how
different structural shapes behave under various loads does teach them a lot.
Ergo, the vast majority of kids only learn so much by following lego assembly
instructions kit after kit.

That's not to say that these toys are not useful. They are. What I am pushing
back against is that the cost of the educational toy or tool is directly
related to the level of learning it can provide.

BTW, I do think that "little bits" can be useful with the right curriculum.
Yet, we are talking about $200 again. This only strengthens my argument that a
dive for the bottom it utterly meaningless when it comes to delivering usable
value, either for education or for other applications.

In the case of poor countries or really poor people, yes, of course, lower
cost could be the difference between access and no access. Yet, that's not the
whole story because they need to spend at least $100 to play.

Is that the primary argument and mission of the various Pi boards? To serve
the poor? Because, if it is, then I'd like to understand why it uses a video
interface that requires fairly recent monitor that will cost somewhere around
$80 and $100 in the US. Anyone who can spend that kind of money can afford
something much better than a Pi. And far more useful...

Something like this:

[http://goo.gl/QnkvrS](http://goo.gl/QnkvrS)

or this:

[http://goo.gl/Mrgatw](http://goo.gl/Mrgatw)

Most Pi's end-up off in a corner collecting dust or in landfills. They are
neat, but I have yet to find them useful. They are not the best financial
investment in terms of education. And they are certainly not good enough to be
used in commercial or industrial systems. I think their popularity is more of
an emotional reaction than a rational decision. You can buy a fully functional
Windows laptop for $100. And, if want to run Linux you can dual boot or
install a VM.

I just don't see it. And I am talking out of experience with kids from ages 9
up to 17.

~~~
walterbell
Do you recommend any sources on kid-friendly electronics curriculum
development, either for homeschooling or as a hobby?

~~~
rebootthesystem
It's hard. I've done my own over the years. I'll look around and see. Products
like SnapCircuits seemed to hold great promise yet they become horribly
disappointing once you see a kid go from circuit to circuit without learning a
thing. Such wasted potential.

------
markokrajnc
First thought: Is this an April Fools Joke? :-)

Second thought: This is G-R-E-A-T!!! :-)

------
nojvek
I'll be that guy. The chip is cool but still requires multiple components
through usb to do something useful. What I want is a $5 hackable phone with
battery, touch lcd, camera, wifi e.t.c

Great if it has a solar panel and gpio, so I can stick it anywhere and forget
about it.

------
codecamper
The biggest problem I had with my Raspberry PI was that it is seriously slow
compared to a desktop machine. It takes time to setup. Time is money, right?

I suppose if you have some mass deployment to do, then great. But for the
individual maker hacker.. there must be a better way to setup and experiment
than waiting for this computer to reboot with the new config, recompile, etc.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I guess it depends on your use case and on your expectations. It took me about
as much time to set up my RPi 2 as it takes to set up a new Linux VM, and
since then it lies peacefully on top of a wardrobe, and I just connect over
SSH to it. Rarely I need to reboot it :).

~~~
codecamper
I wanted to set up the pi as a wifi repeater. This sort of thing required lots
of reboots. Took way too long to setup.

I think the way it should work is they need an emulator that runs on a desktop
machine. Just like iOS & Android development. You get your setup working on
the desktop & then deploy to device.

I guess the main problem with this is that often you want to try hardware that
only works on the pi. Not sure what the solution is there.

Maybe soon these $5 computers will be screaming fast with fast SSD as well,
will reboot in a few seconds, and so no problems.

~~~
lngtmelistener
If you do want to play with it as a wifi repeater, perhaps another OS is a
good idea? Something like openwrt
[https://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/raspberry_pi_foundation/raspber...](https://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/raspberry_pi_foundation/raspberry_pi)
should be quick to write to the SD-card and quick to boot. Raspbian may be a
bit heavy.

