
Raspberry Pi Zero W, with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, priced at $10 - benn_88
https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/raspberry-pi-zero-w-joins-family/
======
MarcScott
Please remember:

1\. Raspberry Pi Trading use UK based manufacturing facilities, so yes, it
costs a little extra to ship outside of the UK.

2\. Raspberry Pi Trading do not have the capital to make x million devices
upfront. So supply will always be limited for devices like the Zero, while
demand is high.

3\. The profits from the sales of all Raspberry Pi devices are used to fund
the Raspberry Pi Foundation. We do charitable work to further Computer Science
education around the world. The target audience is educators and children, and
that will always be the focus. That it happens there are hackers out there
that want to use the device is great, but not the priority.

4\. The popularity of the Raspberry Pi range is mainly down to the amazing
community we have and the huge support available from that community.

~~~
_red
#2. Sadly this fact undermines the real utility of RPI for development.

Its virtually impossible to find any of these "$5 computers" in quantities
greater than 1.

Why develop on a platform that you can never put into production? I don't even
mean producing "x million units", I'm saying you won't even be able to buy 30
of them for an internal company project.

I understand that RPI mission is education and thats admirable - however they
should be completely upfront on their product pages about this....each should
state "DON'T USE THIS IN A PRODUCT" across the top.

~~~
pjc50
The productisable Pi is the "compute module".

Complaining on HN is not the right solution here; if you genuinely want to
fill a production run of thousands of devices with embedded Pi, speak to the
foundation directly.

~~~
astrodust
If you're producing a product where you need _thousands_ of something maybe
getting a custom-built ARM board is a better plan than using a Raspberry Pi.

Making your own ARM board is fairly expensive for one-off things, but for
volume it's not a huge obstacle. There are any number of vendors capable of
producing these for you to almost any specification.

------
Nexxxeh
I just finished a project where this would have been perfect.

You can do wireless keyboardless headless setup. You can do it without
connecting anything but power.

On the SD card, place a file called "ssh" (no extension) so SSH is enabled,
and configure wpa_supplicant with your wifi details. I found this on the RPi
Stack Exchange [1](thanks scruss)

...On the full up-to-date Raspbian...

>If a wpa_supplicant.conf file is placed into the /boot/ directory, this will
be moved to the /etc/wpa_supplicant/ directory the next time the system is
booted, overwriting the network settings; this allows a Wifi configuration to
be preloaded onto a card from a Windows or other machine that can only see the
boot partition.

>Since the /boot partition is accessible by any computer with an SD card
reader, wifi configuration is now much simpler.

>A skeleton wpa_supplicant.conf file can be as little as:

    
    
      network={
        ssid="YOUR_SSID"
        psk="YOUR_PASSWORD"
        key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
      }
    

It needs to be Linux style line endings [according to user2154065] but I used
Notepad++ on Windows to do that.

\--- [1]
[http://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/10251/prepare...](http://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/10251/prepare-
sd-card-for-wifi-on-headless-pi)

~~~
adammck
This is a great feature to get started, but it's unfortunate that the "ssh"
file hack doesn't set up SSH keys and disable password auth, or at least
change the default password. That must be done manually. I dread to think how
many Pis are out there in this configuration.

I hope that in future, a proper/official headless image will be provided, to
provide more sensible defaults. Until then, I made a little tool to patch the
Raspbian images to set things up this way:

[https://github.com/adammck/headless-
raspbian](https://github.com/adammck/headless-raspbian)

~~~
Nexxxeh
Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that it leaves the pi in a ready-to-deploy
stage. I just meant it lets you get into it so you can configure it, which you
otherwise need a keyboard or wired NIC for.

~~~
adammck
Not at all, your solution entirely solves the most annoying part. I just
prefer to do the next step in an automated manner, too.

------
antongribok
My biggest problem with the Raspberry Pis is not having enough time. I'm
serious. The ultra low price point makes it very easy to go out and buy one
(thanks MicroCenter) but then finding time and energy to complete a project
from start to finish is currently my biggest challenge.

I have several at home "in production" doing things like Z-Wave home
automation, Proliphix thermostat chat-ops, wifi AP, some web scraping
scripts...

But, at the same time I have a bunch of other ideas that I have a hard time
finding time for.

My next project will be setting up Pi Cameras for home security and this new
platform is looking very promising for that. Very exciting, but I'm dreading
not finding time for it.

~~~
2sk21
I have much the same problem! I am in the process of using Raspberry Pis to
control my model trains. I have sensors in in the tracks that are connected to
GPIO pins. I need a network of Raspberry Pis to control my whole system but
only one of them needs to be a model 3, the others can be these new Pi zero
Ws.

~~~
jrockway
Are you using multiple RPis just to get more GPIOs? Why not use a BeagleBone
instead, which has way more IO than the RPi?

~~~
stevekemp
Or even a multiplexer chip or two.

I've spent the past 2-3 months slowly learning about hardware with cheap
ESP8266 boards. So much fun wiring small wifi-enabled boards to random sensors
and output devices.

I suspect I'll graduate to using PIs in the future, I used to own one that was
solely used for emulation, but it didn't survive my international relocation.

------
curiousgal
Ah, the joy of living in the Third World, $50 shipping for a $10 item.

~~~
kbart
Shipping is 15€ in EU, so still more expensive than Pi itself. It's a shame
that they overprice shipping so much, it shouldn't cost more than few €
(according to other similar size items I order from Internet on regular
basis).

~~~
Nanite
There are several resellers on the EU mainland which have stock, and not too
horrible shipping fees. Just ordered mine this morning and got shipping
confirmation for arrival tomorrow.

------
crypt1d
One of the best things about rPi products is that for $10 not only do you get
the computer, but you are also able to tap into the huge community support
behind it. Folks at rPi Foundation are doing some really amazing work.
Congrats!

------
schappim
The specs:

\- 1GHz, single-core CPU

\- 512MB RAM

\- Mini-HDMI port

\- Micro-USB On-The-Go port

\- Micro-USB power

\- HAT-compatible 40-pin header

\- Composite video and reset headers

\- CSI camera connector

\- 802.11n wireless LAN

\- Bluetooth 4.0

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

------
pawadu
Oh well...

    
    
        Hold on there landlubber!
        
        When we said one Pi Zero per order we meant it!
        
        Since we're not completely heartless pirates, 
        just firm on our policies, we'll let you go 
        back to your cart and fix this "unfortunate 
        oversight".
        
        We won't tell anyone if you don't.
        
        - the Pimoroni Crew
        
        
        p.s. We always announce new Pi Zero stock on
        Twitter so it may be worth following for the
        latest information!

------
tomelders
How robust and dependable is the Raspberry Pi? I've been looking at Electronic
Point of Sale (EPOS) systems recently, and as far as I can tell, they're third
rate hardware loaded up with fourth rate software selling at first rate
premiums.

I've been considering rolling my own around a Raspberry Pi, but I'm not sure
how dependable they are. Does anyone have any advice on that front?

~~~
joe5150
the Pis themselves tend to be reliable; the weak point will probably be the
microSD card for one hosting write-heavy apps

~~~
hasperdi
+1 for this. There is more explanation here:
[http://hackaday.com/2016/08/03/single-board-revolution-
preve...](http://hackaday.com/2016/08/03/single-board-revolution-preventing-
flash-memory-corruption/)

------
blkhawk
<rant>

Sadly its extremely hard to buy any Pi Zero at the sticker price. Its always
out or not available - and even if you can get em you only can order a limited
amount (in the case were I got lucky it was 1).

The Pi Zero W seems to continue the trend as far as my local distributor is
concerned. I get the overpriced USB hubs its where the profit is at but MAN
stop frigging teasing its annoying if you can't buy it at that price.

I don't want the adapters - I solder to the board directly and while the
sandisk sd card is not terrible its far from the fastest you can get for a
similar price.

</rant>

sorry about that I am calm now.

~~~
benn_88
80k units on sale today from a whole bunch of new retailers around the world,
and we're making 25k units /week.

~~~
trome
So, how is the competitive with Xunlong and FriendlyARM making the OrangePi
Zero and the Nanopi Neo? It seems to have less I/O and still not have a libre
stack, unlike the Allwinner H3.

Is the Raspberry Pi Foundation just coasting on branding at this point to sell
products?

Edit: On another note, will the Raspberry Pi Foundation stick with this very
limited SOC ad infinium? It seems like a poor choice for a single board
computer, you really want I/O and low power usage, but it doesn't deliver on
either.

~~~
makomk
Not just branding - also Pi fans at sites like Hackaday which downplay and
dismiss any competing boards. For example, compare Brian Benchoff's article a
year ago which argues the C.H.I.P. has been rendered irrelevant because it's
$9 and the Pi Zero is $5 while ignoring the fact one has WiFi, with his
article today arguing that this is a major step forward because $10 with WiFi
is really cheaper than $5 without it while omitting any mention of the
similarly-priced boards with WiFi that preceded it:

[http://hackaday.com/2016/02/28/introducing-the-raspberry-
pi-...](http://hackaday.com/2016/02/28/introducing-the-raspberry-pi-3/)

[http://hackaday.com/2017/02/28/10-raspberry-pi-zero-w-
the-w-...](http://hackaday.com/2017/02/28/10-raspberry-pi-zero-w-the-w-means-
wifi-bluetooth/)

~~~
DumpOfGenius
I bought 2 CHIPs, disappointed. Spec sheet is perfect, but it's not raspberry
pi. glitches (sudden full system shutdown when servo turns a little bit
faster), and lack of quality drivers/software to work reliably.

If you need a raspberry pi, just buy a raspberry pi.

------
notheguyouthink
$10 is an awesome price point. I've never toyed with any of these, but i think
i'll pick one up!

How long do you think it'll be before i can safely hook up powered electronics
into a system like RasPi? I'd like to make my home "smart", but i don't want
to have random IoT vulnerabilities in my home. So a simple network of tiny
linux machines powering desk lights/etc will be plenty for me. However,
hooking electronics up is dangerous, so i'd rather wait until a professional
makes it accessible to someone like me.

Thoughts?

~~~
lucaspiller
Look into a protocol like z-wave - you can already get switches, outlets,
heating controllers etc and it can be done without an internet connection. You
can get a USB Z-Wave dongle[0] and then use Home Assistant [1] on a Pi to
control everything.

[0] - [https://www.amazon.co.uk/AEON-AEOEZW090-C-Z-Stick-
Gen5/dp/B0...](https://www.amazon.co.uk/AEON-AEOEZW090-C-Z-Stick-
Gen5/dp/B00YETCNOE/) [1] - [https://github.com/home-assistant/home-
assistant](https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant)

~~~
draugadrotten
...and connect the RPi all to Siri and Apple Homekit with
[https://github.com/tedstriker/homekit2mqtt](https://github.com/tedstriker/homekit2mqtt)
and/or [https://github.com/home-assistant/homebridge-
homeassistant](https://github.com/home-assistant/homebridge-homeassistant)

------
arjie
Didn't see info on power consumption. Has anyone run zeroes completely
wireless using a battery and Bluetooth LE or something or should I be looking
elsewhere.

~~~
redsummer
I've run a pi 3 on a generic iPhone battery brick. Just needs to have 5v USB
output. The pi zero needs 3.3v, so 5v might fry it.

~~~
james_a_craig
No idea where you got the "needs 3.3v" from, but no, it runs off 5V the same
as the Pi 3.

~~~
redsummer
Yes I was wrong.

------
lloydsparkes
This solves my biggest issue, and will make a few projects I'm working on much
much easier.

It was such a pain to do USB networking on the old zero. But its a great size
and form factor for projects

Adding in Bluetooth and Wifi will make it much easier to work with

------
makomk
Guess they were feeling some heat from the new Orange Pi Zero and possibly the
C.H.I.P too. The omission of WiFi from the Pi Zero was a massive pain because
there just wasn't the USB connectors to add it easily.

------
aargh_aargh
Article by Hackaday:

[http://hackaday.com/2017/02/28/10-raspberry-pi-zero-w-
the-w-...](http://hackaday.com/2017/02/28/10-raspberry-pi-zero-w-the-w-means-
wifi-bluetooth/)

------
antirez
That's great, recently I ported Redis to the Pi, and the most exciting device
for IoT applications looked to be definitely the Pi zero, but the lack of
built-in wireless networking was a big limit. At the same time the doubled
price tag of the "W" version does not easily allow to use the zero directly as
a building block of certain IoT devices or consumer products. What I hope is
they'll be able to retain the features and lower the price at the same time.

------
thrillgore
And predictably, I went to Adafruit to see if they Zero W was for sale, aaaand
its sold out.

------
IshKebab
I wish they would make a version of the raspberry pi display that let you plug
in a Pi Zero. Then they could get rid of the huge hump on the back.

------
toxican
This is perfect. I bought two Zeros a few months back and my ONLY issue with
them was how cumbersome having to use a USB hub was for wireless and keyboard
connectivity. Looks like this may still require that for initial setup, but it
makes discrete placement behind a TV much easier once that's taken care of.

------
Entangled
I, for one, welcome the $99 soapbar computer war that's about to unleash.

It is unbelievable how Apple is missing this train. They could put 100 million
soapbars in all homes in the world without even making a dent in their main
products. All aluminum case, just like an Apple TV.

~~~
oceanswave
Call me unimaginative but what would most folks do with a $99 soap bar
computer?

~~~
Entangled
Have access to a world of information?

This would be intended for the 6 billion thirld-worders like me that don't
have access to the internet, not for the one billion that can afford a $1000
iMac.

Plug it to any TV via HDMI, attach a keyboard with trackpad and there you have
it, instant knowledge at your fingertips. You can't imagine how much I have
learned about carpentry, electric motors, water wells, metal foundries, solar,
agriculture, stuff that is really life saving in less developed countries like
mine. I dug my own water well watching videos from youtube using a 2" PVC pipe
and a hose and found water just ten feet under the ground so never again will
suffer a drought like past years.

Youtube, Wikipedia and sites like Khan Academy are a godsend and if only more
people in the world could have access to them imagine all the knowledge and
productivity that could exponentially grow from that.

The more people has access to information the better the whole world will be.
And while the Raspberry Zero W is cool for playing and automating stuff, it is
not enough for providing internet access to a third-worlder like me. Just
upgrade it a little more and sell it for a little more and let people do the
rest. America can continue enjoying their expensive toys while we catch up and
help you build better toys.

------
PanMan
I just hope the will produce enough of them. For a project I was looking to
buy 5-25 of the 'normal' Raspberry pi Zero, and no supplier had them in stock.
We had to go with the normal Rpi 3, which (besides being more expensive) is a
lot bulkier.

------
alexellisuk
Here's my first impressions and picture-rich review of the new revision -
[http://blog.alexellis.io/pizerow-first-
impressions/](http://blog.alexellis.io/pizerow-first-impressions/)

------
martin_a
I am very happy about this. Finally no more USB hubs hanging around my Pi Zero
to have WLAN and keyboard access at the same time (yeah, yeah, SSH I know...).
Just ordered two pieces over here in Germany, I hope they will arrive by the
weekend. :-)

------
sebringj
I wonder if there would be a basic model like this with an included
touchscreen. That would be perfect for kiosks and any type of wall mount setup
like a code entry or whatever. That seems like a common use case to me.

------
peter_retief
It sounds great, going to skip the zero (was never in stock) and go straight
to the zero/W, this is perfect for remote sensors and actuators (I think,
don't have it yet, going to order 5 to start)

~~~
Nanite
Yes, you could but it's still kinda overkill for just a bunch of sensors and
actuators. With limited soldering a Wemos D1 mini would do a much better job.
Use the raspberry as an IoT home server to push the sensor data to.

~~~
voltagex_
The D1s are a pain because they're 3.3v and all of the boards you want to use
with them are 5V

~~~
stevekemp
I keep reading this, but I power all mine with 5v phone-chargers via the mini
USB socket. There are output pins for 5v and 3v so you can choose the
appropriate power for your display/whatever. I've seen nothing go wrong.

~~~
voltagex_
The ESP8266 is somewhat flexible with what voltage it'll accept, but it's not
recommended

------
jpliska
Getchip.com costs less, can actually be purchased and has onboard flash

~~~
makomk
While the C.H.I.P. is arguably a lot nicer in many ways, I believe it's been
out of stock since December.

------
rhino369
Does anyone have a project idea for a Pi? I bought one a couple weeks ago to
make a VPN server but I found out my router had that functionality built in
anyway.

I'm looking for a fun project to scratch my engineering itch. I've been a non-
engineer for too long.

I have an amazon echo for voice recognition functionality if that opens any
doors. But I can't rewire my apartment since it's not mine, so I can't do much
home automation.

~~~
happy-go-lucky
[https://hackaday.io/projects/tag/raspberry%20pi](https://hackaday.io/projects/tag/raspberry%20pi)

Hope that helps.

------
joshvm
I can't find any information on the site, but it looks like they've put a U.FL
footprint on there this time (given that it's connected to the antenna feed),
so you could solder one on fairly easily. Can anyone confirm? This would be
really nice, currently you can't put the Pi3 in a metal box and get the
wireless benefits.

------
polskibus
Does anyone know whether its Bluetooth adapter works well with Bluetooth Low
Energy beacons in Raspbian or similar? I'm interested in using BLE from non C
languages - .NET, Python, Erlang. Have anyone had experience with BLE and
RPi3/zero and can share his/her experience?

------
kefka
Yay. Another "Raspberry Pi" device for X$ that in reality is going to be 2X$ +
.5X$ shipping. Or frankly, just want be obtainable for any price for the first
3 months.

In about getting sick of how they're handling supply issues and pricing. Yeah
10$ ? Bullshit.

~~~
sand500
Idk about the rpi zero but rpi3 is widely available now in brick and mortar
stores. Once the initial demand is met, should just be able to buy from Amazon
or something with free shipping.

------
mschuster91
Meh. I certainly get the addition of the CSI connector, makes for a pretty
cheap wireless camera now - but what I really miss is a DSI connector, and
real DSI displays instead of the I2C displays everyone seems to be using.

------
ge96
Man... Just made a little LAMP socket server with a cute little rubber ducky
antenna for the USB wifi adapter haha... Awesome though. Progress.

------
trome
Why would I buy the Raspberry Pi Zero instead of an OrangePi PC ($15) or an
OrangePi Zero ($8.99)? With the latter, I can actually use an M.2 SSD with the
HATs available for it, and I'll get 40MB/s unlike the Raspi's 4 to 5MB/s, and
both OrangePis are able to run a fully libre stack with kernel 4.10 and have
much more CPU grunt than this Raspi (4x Cortex A7 @ 1.2Ghz vs one ancient
ARMv6 core at 1Ghz).

The built in ethernet port, full size USB port and ability to easily add POE
support are just gravy on top to make it easily usable, rather than have a
dozen dongles and a USB hub hanging off it needlessly.

Edit: Added kernel version, clarified POE support.

~~~
andmarios
Vendor and developer support, community size, available tutorials, etc.

~~~
trome
I don't see Broadcom supporting their chips very well with the Raspberry Pi,
you basically can't use most of the boards functionality on Debian without
adding a bunch of blobs.

Wrt community, linux-sunxi and Armbian are both in better states than the
Raspberry Pi community on their forums or on Reddit, if I google for dhclient
issues with the Raspberry Pi I'm gonna get nowhere fast on fixing said issues.

~~~
bootloop
This is the same for every ARM board if you want multimedia support. (Because
these companies do not allow you to publish their IP) Ofc if you only connect
a punch of hard drives to it and a ethernet cable you are not gonna appreciate
what possibilities a Raspberry Pi and their quite open software stack are able
to offer you. Get a camera and hardware encoding involved in your tinkering
and you will have a bad time for sure.

~~~
trome
Uhh, when you actually talk to Allwinner, they are generally pretty helpful
unless its not their IP to give. I've emailed Tyle at Allwinner in the past to
clear up some chunks of code in the kernel 3.4 BSP, and I found most of the
time the code was intended to be under GPLv2, which he clarified.

How is libmmal for the Raspberry Pi's camera libre by the way? The license
looks to be proprietary, definitely the opposite of open.

------
toypaj
I just bought another Pi Zero on Friday.

So have bought a Wireless one just now too :D

------
silur
gratz you now have a closed-source CHIP with less features

------
godmodus
Might get one for the wireless and use it as an extender

------
roryisok
I bought one this morning, going to hook it up to my router with pi-hole and
block ads/clickbait/Trump out of my browsing across all my devices

------
nathanvanfleet
Still never got the chance to buy one

------
nd7
Where is my complete B board? Meh, wait a whole year again.

------
Const-me
I wonder if/when will it run Win10 IoT Core?

------
redsummer
Would this be quick enough OSMC (Kodi) and RetroPie? I have both on a single
pi 3 right now using RetrOSMC.

------
dtornabene
You may be "calm now", but nobody wants to read this. And at this exact moment
there is a perfect comment directly above this at the top of the thread. Not
only are you, and those like you, _not_ the center of the universe, nobody
wants to spend their time sifting through these comments on public boards. I
know I'm screaming into the hurricane here, but if you were both entitled
enough to post this _and also self aware enough to know that its a self-
serving rant_ maybe, just maybe, think before you start mashing keys.

~~~
watty
To be honest I think your post is more distracting than the one you're
replying to (and likely mine more than yours). Complaining about lack of stock
is a fair comment and I don't mind reading it. It also creates conversation
about where to find it for cheap, why it's limited, etc. (as seen by the
replies).

~~~
dtornabene
Maybe? I guess thats a fair response. I just had a pretty allergic reaction to
<rant> and what came off as really, just whining, especially since as I
pointed out, the comment directly above it (for me, at the time of posting)
was an almost word for word rebuttal of the attitude of op. Maybe I just need
a break from this site, getting to the point where logging in to see people
complaining, constantly is weighing me down. Thanks for the comment.

