You read it right, US$5 (about RM20) for a fully functioning, single-board computer. Impressively, the new Raspberry Pi Zero is said to be 40% to 60% faster than the original Raspberry Pi; it’s smaller too. Raspberry Pi Foundation said that its new credit-card sized computer is aimed at IoT hobbyists, robotic engineers and university students.
Interestingly, the Raspberry Pi Zero comes with the same processor that was originally included in the first mini computer by Raspberry Pi. However, the first Raspberry Pi’s core chip has a 700Mhz clock speed; the same core chip included with the Raspberry Pi Zero is clocked at 1Ghz instead, which effectively makes it faster.
Additionally, the Raspberry Pi Zero includes 512MB of RAM, a microSD card slot, mini-HDMI and micro-USB sockets. Besides that, the credit card-sized computer has an unpopulated 40-pin GPIO and composite video headers. However, there are a few downsides to the new Raspberry Pi Zero: there aren’t any on-board Ethernet and Wi-Fi, although they can be easily attached via the micro-USB port.
The Raspberry Pi Zero’s price may be appealing to not only those that are well-versed in computer hardware; there are plenty of things that can be done with the mini computer that may interest normal consumers as well. Some may even be surprised to know that the Raspberry Pi Zero can easily be turned into a retro console emulator using RetroPie. If you want to try it out for yourself, watch the video below.
(Source: Raspberry Pi via TechCrunch)
