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Raspberry Pi Zero Gains Camera Support, Keeps $5 Price (engadget.com)
An anonymous reader writes: The Raspberry Pi Zero has received its first major hardware upgrade today: a camera connector. The new addition of a camera connector works well with the two new Sony imaging modules announced last month. The board will retain its $5 price, too. Eben Upton, Raspberry Pi founder, said in a blog post that "through dumb luck, the same fine-pitch FPC connector that we use on the Compute Module Development Kit just fits onto the right hand side of the board." The team was able to close the feature gap between the Zero and larger Pi boards by moving the surface components towards the left, and rotating the activity LEDs. The CSI connector on the Zero is 3.5mm smaller than the adapter on the Pi 3, so you will need to invest in a new cable if you've already invested in a camera module for an existing project.
that's ok, you'll be censured to that of a troll anyways.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
$5 price is a joke since you cannot actually buy the thing.
Sorry, my friends and I had no trouble getting ZEROs for $5 at the local MicroCenter. Just keep a neteye on availability and drop in that day or next. The MCs get them in every month now.
Dream on. People pay me to build Pi-based systems. This "toy" is at least as powerful as your desktop computer, circa Y2k, and a whole lot smaller and cheaper. It's being used for network monitor and control systems, process controllers, multimedia kiosks, home automation systems and a whole lot more. The Pi is a fully functional computer that's cheap enough to hand out in quantity as party favors.
If you weren't an anonymous coward, I'd recommend you be modded up, not down. Just so everyone could see how laughable you are.
Guy here near me did this. He waited out in front of the store and bough all 150 that were in stock. When I dropped by in the afternoon to grab one, they were all gone.
"Freedom in the USA is not the ability to do what you want. It is the ability to stop others from doing what THEY want"
Sorry, my friends and I had no trouble getting ZEROs for $5 at the local MicroCenter.
Sorry, only a minority of Americans (let alone humans) have a local MicroCenter.
Wake me up when you can get them from Radio Shack. For all their closures, I drive past one of those regularly.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You left out throwies.
http://makezine.com/projects/p...
This happens with .22 ammo as well. Some asshole keeps going by the local walmart and buying all the .22 ammunition and every time I go by they tell me it sold out the day before. They've got .45, .44, 9mm and 5.56 but no fucking .22! Of all the shit to run out of.
This "toy" is at least as powerful as your desktop computer, circa Y2k, and a whole lot smaller and cheaper. It's being used for network monitor and control systems, process controllers, multimedia kiosks, home automation systems and a whole lot more. The Pi is a fully functional computer that's cheap enough to hand out in quantity as party favors.
While I agree that the Pi *was* a good platform, it has caused us nothing but headaches lately. The foundation is a not-for-profit, and they do not make money on their devices. In fact, they can only offer the price points they do because of massive subsidies by chip makers. Without those subsidies, you can add $15+ to every Raspberry Pi.
That is ultimately a problem because every time the foundation releases a new Pi, they stop making older versions. This is critical because it means that any design you have based around a pi will only have a useful lifespan of less than 4 years. You then have to adapt the design to a new Pi model. While that may not sound like a big deal, it is a huge burden even if all you have to do is recompile, because everything has to be retested, and god help you if you paid for CE or UL, because now you have to refile, and that costs a damn fortune.
The biggest kick in the balls is that the Pis are closed source, so there is no way to simply pick up and have your own manufactured, you're stuck. We have been so bitten, and our new designs are Beaglebone based because the retail version is just as widely available, and we have the manufacturing files tucked away, so they cant be end-of-lifed on us. To Raspberry Pi and Broadcom, I say a heartfelt Fuck You.
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
What types of systems? And how do I get a job doing this? What's a good place to start learning this?
There are all kinds of companies that do this. In spite of the stated purpose of the R-Pi foundation, the vast majority of Raspberry Pis are purchased for inclusion into final products by small to medium sized companies. I am currently contracting for a company that has done just that, and over the past 4 years has used around 5k R-Pis. I have contracted for another company in the past that was similarly inclined, and another one that used Beaglebones.
In answer to your question, There are lots of job opportunities along those lines. Search any job site you like for jobs requiring the keywords Embedded and Linux, and you'll hit on tons of them. Pays pretty decent, but be prepared to face some tough problems, as every one of these embedded platforms has tons of really annoying quirks, and the companies that use them grew *fast* because the SBCs allowed them a very rapid development cycle, so they expect anything can be done with a Pi and a few months of coding.
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
This is why they produce the compute module; you get the 40 pin header, usb etc in a SO-DIMM and commercial users have a standard unit they can design around for several years. The BBB is a superior device though, I agree.
moox. for a new generation.
In other news, the RAM on the Raspberry Pi A+ has been increased from 256 MB to 512 MB.
I ordered a Raspberry Pi Zero in February, and I'm still waiting for it. Instead of "enhancing" it like this, how about delivering on your promises and actually making / shipping them to people who ordered them?
Every map has an intentional error. --Every cartographer, ever.
Kid-proof tablet..
Unless you have a very specialised application smartphones can do so much LESS.
As fun as android is paying with a full fledged OS, no word network, no externally attachable camera, lack of USB, lack of monitor connection, and critically lack of I/O means that your proposed solution is not compatible with 99% of what people do with a device that is halfway between a microcontroller platform and a computer.
Also you scored a -1 fail for mentioning that a smartphone has an app to act as a Kodi remote. You know what lots of people use RPis for? Kodi.
That is ultimately a problem because every time the foundation releases a new Pi, they stop making older versions.
Nope, Eben Upton clearly stated that as long as there is demand they still make the older versions.
Another person who thinks that "software is forever". It doesn't "wear out", so you only have to pay for it once, not as a maintenance item.
Apparently this thread is a haven for the delusional.
in 4 years, it hardly matters that the hardware has changed - and it should be noted that the hardware doesn't change that much, or you wouldn't be able to plug vintage cameras into the Pi Zero. None of the stuff I wrote using WiFi dongles changed when I moved it from the original Pi B to the Pi 3. In 4 years, a lot more than hardware changes. But more on that in a moment.
I'm also skeptical of the assertion that these things are still being subsidized. As popular as the Pi is, I think whatever subsidies there were got paid off long ago. Indeed, you can go out and buy a pretty decent tablet for not much more than the Pi 3 runs these days. I know, got one for a Xmas present. Peppy little thing, too. Just not as good a screen as the more expensive ones.
But the biggest joke of all in this pile of questionable assertion has has to do with maintaining the system.
I got a call from a customer who I'd done a specialized monitoring system for about 2 years back because he was having problems getting it running on the Pi 3. Turns out that the #1 issue was simply that the Debian OS itself had been updated multiple times and the original code build was invoking obsolete system libraries.
And that's the exact same problem that would have occurred on a full-blown desktop or server machine. Because the Pi is a computer, not a microwave oven. And contrary to what the bean counters and PHB's believe, computers are not something that can be left un-maintained and only paid for once.
The Beaglebones also weren't designed to meet an extremely low price point and it shows. I've used dozens of them as little network connected devices, and they are remarkably capable and stable.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
Stock enough to survive the evolution.
Redesign your form factors to survive changes.
OR design your own.
You have described the problem micro-sized manufacturers have always had. Just don't rely on injection molding for parts, since you'll be back whining about tooling and iterative design.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.