Raspberry Pi Zero: The $5 Computer

Have you ever wanted a Raspberry Pi but thought that £16/$25—roughly three packs of cigarettes—was a little exorbitant for a complete computer capable of running Linux? Well, I have good news: the Raspberry Pi Foundation has just released the Pi Zero, a single-board computer that costs just £4/$5.

The Zero isn’t just some add-on module or something like that, either—it’s a full-fledged member of the Raspberry Pi family. The Zero is powered by a Broadcom BCM2835 (the same SoC in the Raspberry Pi 1), with a 1GHz ARM11 CPU core. There’s 512MB of RAM; a micro SD slot; two micro USB sockets (data and power); and a mini HDMI socket that can output at 1080p60. Perhaps most importantly, though, the Zero has 40 GPIO pins with the same pinout as the Model A+, B+, and 2B. There’s also some headers for RCA composite video out.

The ARM CPU, according to the Foundation, is 40 percent faster than the original Raspberry Pi 1 Models A, A+, B, and B+. The SoC, plus the RAM and the standard GPIO layout, means that the Zero has enough chutzpah to run Raspbian. It should also be fully compatible with most existing Raspberry Pi software and projects.

The other notable thing about the Zero, as you may have noticed from the photos and video, is that it’s tiny. At 65mm long, 30mm wide, and 5mm tall, it’s about half the size of a credit card.

The Zero is available from a bunch of retailers in the UK for £4 (Element14, The Pi Hut, Pimoroni) and $5 in the US (Adafruit). The Foundation says that they’ve produced “several tens of thousands” of the Zero at its factory in Wales, but they still expect demand to outstrip supply “for the next little while.” Rather amusingly, most retailers are attempting to bundle the Zero with an HDMI cable that costs as much as the computer itself. The price of copper nowadays, eh?

Another option, if you live in the UK, is to pick up a print copy of the MagPi magazine—available in shops today for £6—which comes with a free Pi Zero on the front cover. 

-Agencies