The Raspberry Pi Foundation has announced a new and ridiculously cheap education-focused computer, the Raspberry Pi Zero.
Over the years, the Raspberry Pi brand has become synonymous with bare bones, ultra-affordable, heavily customisable micro-computers. They’ve become an invaluable tool for anyone in the early stages of learning to program.
They’re really very cheap, too, with the latest model – the Raspberry Pi 2 – debuting for $35/£27 earlier this year. But that’s not quite affordable enough for the Raspberry Pi Foundation, it seems.
The Raspberry Pi Zero has just been announced. It’s a tiny circuit board of a computer that measures just 65mm x 30mm x 5mm, but that’s not why it’s been pictured alongside a US five dollar bill. That would be because it retails for just $5, or £4 in UK money.
Despite this, the Raspberry Pi Foundation calls the Zero “a full-fledged member of the Raspberry Pi family.” It’s powered by a 1GHz Broadcom BCM2835 processor that’s 40 percent faster than the original Raspberry Pi.
This is backed by 512MB of LPDDR2 RAM. It also features a microSD card slot, a mini-HDMI socket, and micro USB sockets for data and power.
It also features the standard 40-pin GPIO header and a composite video header for hooking it up to various other external components (such as a display).
Suffice to say, the foundation is expecting demand to outstrip supply for a little while.
Related: Raspberry Pi 2 vs BBC Micro Bit
It should be noted that the $5/£4 price is for the Raspberry Pi Zero on its own. It doesn’t include any cables or a microSD card for storage for that price.
If you include those components into the bargain, you could be looking at spending £10-£16. A scandalous amount, we’re sure you’ll agree.
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
