Graham Prophet
EDN Europe
Distributor element14 adds to the Raspberry Pi product range with the smallest form factor Raspberry Pi on the market, the Raspberry Pi Zero. This ultra-slim Raspberry Pi board is the smallest form factor Raspberry Pi at 65 mm long by 30 mm wide and 5 mm deep.
To save space and reduce cost on the new Raspberry Pi Zero there is one Micro USB data port and a Mini HDMI port which supports full HD 1080P output. The 40 pin GPIO contains the same pin out as the Raspberry Pi 2 but is unpopulated providing the flexibility to use only the connections the solution requires. The Raspberry Pi Zero uses the single-core BCM2835 processor, which can now be over-clocked to 1 GHz, and the board has 512 MB of onboard RAM with a MicroSD port for storage.
Claire Doyle, Global Head of Raspberry Pi at element14, said: “...Raspberry Pi Zero [is] the smallest and cheapest Raspberry Pi … the full portfolio of Raspberry Pi models ranging from the latest high performance Raspberry Pi 2 model B, through the Raspberry Pi 1 series of models A+, B and B+, to the newly added base model Pi Zero. A complete ecosystem of accessories is available for all series of the Raspberry Pi, so that users can enjoy the 100s of applications the Raspberry Pi enables no matter what the model.”
It is expected that this model will appeal to hobbyists and makers as well as industrial engineers looking to create solutions where size and low power consumption is at a premium such as robots, drones for capturing video, or to connect to add-ons for motor control. element14 has two Raspberry Pi Zero packages available, both include a mini HDMI to HDMI adapter and Micro USB ‘On the Go’ adapter, and the second includes the NOOBS MicroSD card.
Both are available from CPC in the UK and Farnell element14 in Europe, Newark element14 and MCM in North America.
