Raspberry Pi Unveils New $5 Mini-computer

An anonymous reader writes: The Raspberry Pi Foundation unveiled the Pi Zero, a new $5 mini-computer, Thursday morning. The board is the smallest Raspberry Pi yet, containing the first-gen Raspberry Pi's BCM2835 chip (safely overclocked to 1GHz) and 512MB RAM. The latest issue of The Magpi will include a free Raspberry Pi Zero and hits U.K. newsstands Thursday. The announcement came just a few days before the highly anticipated C.H.I.P. $9 mini-computer goes on sale to the public. puddingebola writes: How can they achieve this price, you may ask? "Its 40-pin GPIO header has identical pinouts, although the pads on the circuit board are "unpopulated," meaning you'll have to solder on your own connector. The same goes for the composite video output: The connection is available, but if you need a socket, you must solder it yourself." Dude, go to Radio Shack. Some relevant specs besides those mentioned above, from the blog post linked:

• Micro-SD card slot
• mini-HDMI socket for 1080p60 video output
• Micro-USB sockets for data and power
• Identical pinout to Model A+/B+/2B
• An unpopulated composite video header
• "Our smallest ever form factor, at 65mm x 30mm x 5mm"

New submitter graffitiwriter adds a note that the newest Pi has "already been turned into a retro gaming console. It turns out the Pi Zero is more than capable of running Retro Pie and other emulators, and even has a video output that lets you play games on an old CRT TV."

Comments

Re:More use if it had some network connection

[MyAlternateID]

Hard to see how it can be useful for IoT

Let's give the folks at Raspberry some credit. It appears they are much smarter than the morons jumping on the IoT security nightmare bandwagon.

Re:So how long until we have Rasperry Pi Pi

[Crowd Computing]

The Pi actually stands for Python, the main programming language used for the Raspberry Pi, effectively making it a mathematically sweet triple pun: Pi, Pie, Py-thon. Sheer genius in naming. The first name is inspired by the old tradition of naming personal computer makers after fruit: Apple, Acorn.

Re:So how long until we have Rasperry Pi Pi

[Anonymous Coward]

Except Python isn't the "main" programming language used for the RPi.

Pi is because originally we were going to produce a computer that could only really run Python. So the Pi in there is for Python. Now you can run Python on the Raspberry Pi but the design we ended up going with is much more capable than the original we thought of, so it's kind of outlived its name a little bit.

http://www.techspot.com/article/531-eben-upton-interview/

Re:Conversion Error

[barc0001]

It REALLY depends what your application for it is. For controlling things or reading a sensor? Arduino all the way. Media center or retro gaming emulation console? Not a chance, Pi all the way.

Re:Conversion Error

[Half-pint HAL]

The SoC in a Pi is a media device (originally designed for use in camcorders) so this is not underpowered -- it's perfectly adequately powered.