What the world needs now is Pi, sweet $5 Raspberry Pi Zero Our American cousins may be getting stuck in to pumpkin pie today, but Raspberry Pi hopes they'll also appreciate its $5 (£4) Pi Zero computer, which the Blighty outfit launched today. In a video showing off the teeny-tiny 'puter, Raspberry Pi boss Eben Upton spoke about how the high cost of machines, such as the Commodore …
Actually it's nearer to three quid.
Or if you're using Mercan conversion logic, five quid.
I think there were some available on online stores for £4 odd (remember VAT) but sold out quickly.
There are some still there for £11 ish, these include a cables and connectors bundle.
Got mine from WHSmith for £5.99, stuck to the front of a magazine.
The article seems to be missing the fact that the new Pi Zero is free with The MagPi magazine issue 40, out today.
That does seem a rather obvious omission.
Add that to the two USB mistake (It's actually one USB port one USB power input), makes me think that not only is the article late to market, but not particularly well researched. I guess launching the PI2 story earlier this year before embargo was lifted means El Reg are no longer on the Pi mailing list.
Plus you have to add the cost of SD card, PSU, keyboard, mouse, USB hub, cables and cable adapters and most likely a WiFi module before you have anything really useful. So that's probably nearer £40 than £4, but still an impressive achievement for what it is. At least those doubters who said there never would be a sub-$10 full-blown Linux PC any time soon have been proven wrong.
Given that cost savings seem to have come from trimming off things which the Pi B+ has, if needing to add them back to get where one wants to be, it may make sense to just buy a B+.
It could be an Arduino killer if it wasn't for the half a minute boot-up time and the risk of corrupting the SD card if the power supply is pulled without a proper shutdown.
Once you add the cost of WiFi or Ethernet it is not any different from B or B+ as cost. That is also likely to necessitate a USB hub as these will eat a significant chunk of the already measly Pi USB power budget.
Let's face it - a compute with _NO_ network connectivity is rather useless in this day and age.
This weekend, I shall be building a turntable controller for a model railway. Stepper motors and switches, and a need for a non-tech to pull the SD card and fiddle with the settings to suit his layout. (So Arduino is out for a super-fast development lash-up) - I'd say this is absolutely not useless. In fact I'd say it's just cut costs by £25 over a standard PiB2, and will do the job /perfectly/.
I believe you may have inadvertently confused your opinion for fact. It happens, have a beer.
"turntable controller for a model railway."
Yes! This is exactly the type of project I was thinking of too. Kids building robots or whatever can have great fun, but at 30 quid each a standard Pi might be a bit expensive to permanently leave in place when they move onto the next project. The Pi Zero sounds like it's a drop in replacement once the dev work is done on a standard Pi for standalone robots or other controller applications.
If so, then why is the Arduino so popular? Once the program er, the sketch is done, like the Arduino, it doesn't have to be connected to anything other than the device it controls, which might just be relays or optoisolators. Bingo! You have your multi colored Xmas tree LED light controller, or model railroad crossing, etc...
> a compute with _NO_ network connectivity is rather useless in this day and age.
And yet many people find Arduinos to be useful.
This is a 'maker' device. Build it into a robot, wear it on your coat, run your plant watering system, ... Development can be done on-board (with TV and keyboard) or by connecting using SSH. Or develop on Pi 2 and deploy to Zero.
Think of it competing with the BBC thing or Arduino rather than a PC - it is only $5.
As an IoT device it can use 1-wire or I2c. You could add Bluetooth or WiFi.
"a compute with _NO_ network connectivity is rather useless in this day and age."
Certainly I have several PIC 18Fs connected by RS232/USB converters to my file server and laptops and they are very useful - and accessible over networks by running a daemon to control/interrogate them.
Risking a few downvotes here but !!!
Everyone stating that he doesnt need network connectivity and can just plug in a monitor.
Yes that works
Or just remote in.
Huh !!!! there is a link missing in that chain that he is complaining about.....
personally I would love this form factor with Ethernet, or preferably built in wireless, even for your quad copter fish tank light controller, having network connectivity would make a big difference !!! that being said, I agree no it is not always needed, although I believe it would get more use if it had network connectivity baked in.
> Or just remote in.
> Huh !!!! there is a link missing in that chain that he is complaining about.....
You can SSH in using the USB connection, or use a USB 'Terminal Cable' to GPIO pins.
http://elinux.org/How_to_use_an_Android_tablet_as_a_Raspberry_Pi_console_terminal_and_internet_router
https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruits-raspberry-pi-lesson-5-using-a-console-cable
Precisely, it's a trivial add-on but an unneeded cost if you're only going to remove it anyway. One of the things I don't like about many boards is that they usually stack a pair of USB A ports with an Ethernet port so while the board may be small it needs a case that's inches high or the bother of desoldering the skyscrapers. It's one of the things I like about the Pi A+ boards. With the smaller form factor I will find the Pi Zero much more useful. Cheers to the Raspberry Pi folks, thank you.
Which tech inclines person hasn't built up a collection of keyboards, mice, usb hubs and sd cards. The PSU is just a phone charger. Even if you haven't almost all of these things are available at PoundEmpire for ... £1, apart from the sd card perhaps. That includes the cables and WiFi adapters as well.
The main omission is the GPIO but that could well have been on purpose for a size consideration as they are pennies to add (and very little to add yourself).
Great that it is $4, but pity that it just makes the price of a working system about $200 instead of $240 - you are going to need an HDMI monitor and a broadband connection as well as all the other stuff. As for the idea that you can use the TV - well perhaps if you have a new enough one to have HDMI and no-one else in the family wants to watch it. The cheapest way to get a working system is probably a second hand laptop. This idea that a Pi is a cheap computer for poor kids is just spin.
Most sales will be as toys to us techies who have a collection of old keyboards, mice, displays etc left over from our recently replaced high performance gaming machines.
>> You're all missing the point that you need a house, to provide the power socket, to plug the power supply into, thus raising the cost significantly. <<
And in order to program for it, you have to be alive, so there's all the running costs for your body (food, drink, clothing) to take into account. Add all that up and it gets even more pricey...
>> As for the idea that you can use the TV - well perhaps if you have a new enough one to have HDMI and no-one else in the family wants to watch it.
This is how I learned to code. On a BBC Model B connected to a TV. But then my family had better things to do than mong in front of the box. You know, things like breathing, having a life, watching paint dry. If you're going to have a TV in your house, make the bloody thing useful. Create, don't mindlessly consume.
Not if you actually want to use it for anything it isn't. Indeed, the premier reason for dodgy performance on all Pi models to date has been given as "insufficient power supplied" and the advice offered is "you can't just use a phone charger and expect it to work".
I get my Pi power supplies from Sparkfun because they offer one that is guaranteed not to suffer from overvoltage if the unit is plugged in without the load attached and which can deliver the oomph required.
I doubt this is an Arduino killer, unless the power consumption of it is significantly lower than the original 256 meg Pi model B.
It is neat, though. I might buy one just because.
>Plus you have to add the cost of SD card, PSU, keyboard, mouse, USB hub, cables and cable adapters and most likely a WiFi module before you have anything really useful. So that's probably nearer £40 than £4
Informal Reg pole: How many of you here have these doodads already kicking around, taking up space in desk drawers and shoeboxes?
For those who don't, Pi are offering a pack containing a mini-HDMI to HDMI adaptor, micro-B USB to USB A female cable (OTG) and a 2x20 0.1" male GPIO header for a total of £4.
"Informal Reg pole: How many of you here have these doodads already kicking around, taking up space in desk drawers and shoeboxes?"
Loads, but can never find the right one when I need it. Mini-USB cable? Not today, all I can find are 5 micro-USB cables... Tomorrow I'll inevitably have the opposite problem.
But I'm sure that one day I'll find a use for that 3-port IEEE1394 PCI card!
What people fail to realize is yes you can add all the usual parts to it (wifi, keyboard, etc) but what if you simply want a really tiny A+ hooked to a quad-copter? You know, a tiny Pi for the makers.
This is a good start since you don't have all the extra components of the B+ but rather a bare-bones A+ that you can add components to to make your own version for what you are making.
As for Wifi, it has options. USB hub to Wifi or use an SDIO wifi module on the GPIO.
- S.A
"It could be an Arduino killer if it wasn't for the half a minute boot-up time and the risk of corrupting the SD card if the power supply is pulled without a proper shutdown."
You can avoid the SD card corruption by putting volatile data into RAM discs and remounting the SD card read only.
Send logs to a remote syslog daemon (try "Kiwi" if you are a Windows type) and mount /tmp /var/lib and the like into RAM discs. There are probably lots of rather more detailed howtos out there ...
"It could be an Arduino killer if it wasn't for the half a minute boot-up time and the risk of corrupting the SD card if the power supply is pulled without a proper shutdown."
Well that's largely due to the standard Pi software images which are whole desktops.
A minimal system built with buildroot etc could boot in under 3 seconds and can be configured to avoid all the SD card corruption issues (eg. by using a read-only squashfs rootfs).
I buy Arduino mini-pro's in bags of 5 from China. £2 each.
I use them if I ever get a sudden uncontrollable urge to blink an LED, or create a metronome.
But, as a workhorse (needed a quick pulse generator to simulate varying high speed wind the other day), they're brilliant. Quicker to get that going than solder a 555 etc. onto a scrap of veroboard.
I have the datasheet for the '328p chip. If I was (re)starting programming, it's reasonably clear, and reasonably teachable to assembly level.
Not so the Broadcom chip in the new Pi-Zero. Low-level stuff is protected by IPR, GPU info is definitely hidden. Reading the available information* gave me a fit of the vapours.
So, you learn Python, Scratch, C.
New world.
* http://infocenter.arm.com/help/topic/com.arm.doc.ddi0301h/DDI0301H_arm1176jzfs_r0p7_trm.pdf
"Reading the available information* gave me a fit of the vapours."
Whenever I've looked at ARM's own documentation it's taken me back to an era I had feared had gone forever, when processors and the stuff around them were properly documented. Yes there's lots of it. Sometimes that's the point. Sometimes simplicity is good too.
"GPU info is definitely hidden"
Wondering if you saw this announcement last year (20140228), and/or what you feel is still missing? (Graphics isn't my thing)
https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/a-birthday-present-from-broadcom/
"[...] Earlier today, Broadcom announced the release of full documentation for the VideoCore IV graphics core, and a complete source release of the graphics stack under a 3-clause BSD license. [...]"
Or this follow-up a few weeks later:
https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/quake-iii-bounty-we-have-a-winner/
"[...] At the end of February, Broadcom announced the release of full documentation for the VideoCore IV graphics core, and a complete source release of the graphics stack for the BCM21553 cellphone chip. To celebrate, we offered a $10k prize to the first person to port this codebase to the BCM2835 application processor that sits at the heart of the Raspberry Pi, and to get Quake 3 (which already runs on the Pi) running on the newly open ARM driver, rather on the closed-source VPU driver. Our hope was that the ported driver would be a helpful reference for anyone working on a Mesa/Gallium3D driver for VideoCore IV [...]"
I stand corrected, Sir!
Yes, I remember seeing that article now.
My point was that I wouldn't use the Broadcom chip to teach a beginner to learn about microprocessor architecture.
I had it easy, I suppose. My first experience of microcontrollers was when a (reasonably elderly) engineer* gave me the Intel 4004 manual. I DRANK it!!!
Now, 40 years on, I use Atmel Xmega a-series, that manual is - well - hard. (Also several errors...Took me a week to get the A/D converter to give me a believable reading).
But, again, I wouldn't give it to a novice.
* He also gave me his HP35 RPN calculator. Still have it, in its leather 'wallet'. When I get the courage, I'll try to power it up. 40 years old???
"I stand corrected, Sir!"
Please be seated.
"I wouldn't use the Broadcom chip to teach a beginner to learn about microprocessor architecture."
What sane person would? But as SoCs go, there's a lot of documentation about what you can do with the stuff in the Pi. Less about what's inside the Broadcom SoC, though probably still more than you'll see from the cheap and cheerful Rokchips and Allwinnners and such beloved of the "build one batch and move on to the next design" outfits out East.
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