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Raspberry Pi Zero: the $5 computer

raspberrypi.org

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Re: Raspberry Pi Zero: the $5 computer

#92
post #26

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…

Are you sure about 1? Where are the maths please? In my little circle, the only people who have raspberry already have awesome computers and co.

Curious about that.

Re: Raspberry Pi Zero: the $5 computer

#93
post #77
post #55

The "$5 computer" is, of course, £4 in the UK. http://pimoroni.com/zero

Without VAT, it's about $5 [0] [0] https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=%28100%2F%28100%2B20%29+*+...

Indeed, I just purchased one from https://shop.pimoroni.com/ for £3.33. Alas, it was £3.00 for shipping.

Re: Raspberry Pi Zero: the $5 computer

#94
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.

Re: Raspberry Pi Zero: the $5 computer

#95
post #41

Is there any way to buy these from Europe?

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

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

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

Re: Raspberry Pi Zero: the $5 computer

#97
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...

Re: Raspberry Pi Zero: the $5 computer

#98
post #26

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…

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.

Re: Raspberry Pi Zero: the $5 computer

#99
post #90

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…

> Arduino Uno for $2 Are you sure about this? It doesn't sound... legal.

I meant Chinese clones. Arduino is Open Hardware, it's perfectly legal (that's kind of a point of Open Hardware movement). It's equivalent in form and function to the genuine Arduino made in Italy.

Re: Raspberry Pi Zero: the $5 computer

#100
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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... for some horror stories about crap USB chargers.

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

I guess there's a market for importing Chinese USB chargers from Europe into China then ;)

But yep, the CE mark is related to the importing paperwork so only signifies something inside EU, would be interesting to know if it's a positive or negative quality signal inside China...

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