Raspberry Pi announces Pi Zero with Wireless and Bluetooth

[IrshaadAbdool]

We have all been fan of the Raspberry Pi boards - well at least most tinkerers among us -  and the Pi Zero was a piece of jewel with its super compact size and functionalities. 

But having to plug in a network cable or a wireless dongle into it .. well .. defeated the purpose of it being that small !

 

Well! No more!

 

The Raspberry Pi team just announced [1] a new product variant with Bluetooth and Wireless LAN !!

 

Quote

Today is Raspberry Pi’s fifth birthday: it’s five years since we launched the original Raspberry Pi, selling a hundred thousand units in the first day, and setting us on the road to a lifetime total (so far) of over twelve million units. To celebrate, we’re announcing a new product: meet Raspberry Pi Zero W, a new variant of Raspberry Pi Zero with wireless LAN and Bluetooth, priced at only $10.

 Well, I will now cancel my current order for the -now old- Pi Zero's and get a bunch of the new one

 

Yay !!

 

[1] - https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/raspberry-pi-zero-w-joins-family/

[KuJoe]

I might get one, I just wish the Raspberry Pis themselves weren't so bad compared to other ARM devices at the same price point.

[AlTech]

It's a shame they don't have a Raspberry Pi which is more powerful.

 

I'd probably buy a Pi 4 if it included 2GB RAM (or more), faster CPU + GPU and more storage.

[IrshaadAbdool]

9 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

It's a shame they don't have a Raspberry Pi which is more powerful.

 

I'd probably buy a Pi 4 if it included 2GB RAM (or more), faster CPU + GPU and more storage.

I completely agree with you.. the often-hanging and freezing nature of the Pi gets me upset sometimes..

[KuJoe]

8 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

It's a shame they don't have a Raspberry Pi which is more powerful.

 

I'd probably buy a Pi 4 if it included 2GB RAM (or more), faster CPU + GPU and more storage.

+1, I have every model of Raspberry Pi except for the Zero (I just ordered the Zero W for a specific project in mind) but every time I go to use one I swap it out for one of my ODroids instead.

[KuJoe]

Just now, IrshaadAbdool said:

I completely agree with you.. the often-hanging and freezing nature of the Pi gets me upset sometimes..

Yeah, this was the most frustrating part about them. I don't need a lot of performance for most of my uses for them but having to reboot it every day or two made it worthless.

[Granular]

9 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

It's a shame they don't have a Raspberry Pi which is more powerful.

For me the main point of contention is the storage. More specifically the lack of solid ways to make it redundant.

But including a couple of SATA ports would compromise the size and the price for people using it for robotics, home automation and other projects that don't require it.

[KuJoe]

2 minutes ago, Granular said:

For me the main point of contention is the storage. More specifically the lack of solid ways to make it redundant.

But including a couple of SATA ports would compromise the size and the price for people using it for robotics, home automation and other projects that don't require it.

I personally would prefer USB 3.0 ports over SATA ports, but I think they should come with eMMC storage like the other devices in the same price range do.

[SCHISCHKA]

24 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

It's a shame they don't have a Raspberry Pi which is more powerful.

 

I'd probably buy a Pi 4 if it included 2GB RAM (or more), faster CPU + GPU and more storage.

in other words a $100 board. their goal has always been cheap. decent multimedia playback has always been a bonus through hack. Check out i think its Asus that recently brought out a decent looking design that has avoided use of the USB chip for all IO

[KuJoe]

2 minutes ago, SCHISCHKA said:

in other words a $100 board. their goal has always been cheap. decent multimedia playback has always been a bonus through hack. Check out i think its Asus that recently brought out a decent looking design that has avoided use of the USB chip for all IO

Other developers are able to do it at roughly the same price as the Raspberry Pi (less than $10 more). Then again for another $20-$30 you can get an Octa-core CPU, 2GB of RAM, eMMC storage, USB 3.0, and Gigabit ethernet.

[IrshaadAbdool]

If mobile phone manufactures can crunch awesome specs in such small footprint.. I believe Raspberry can do a similar job..

[SCHISCHKA]

40 minutes ago, KuJoe said:

Other developers are able to do it at roughly the same price as the Raspberry Pi (less than $10 more). Then again for another $20-$30 you can get an Octa-core CPU, 2GB of RAM, eMMC storage, USB 3.0, and Gigabit ethernet.

yes but like i said the r-pi goal is to be as cheap as possible that is why others are correcting their deficiencies with more pricey boards. R-PI 3 in NZ is $60NZD from RS with about $10 for shipping, its a bit more to import just one yourself with $60 being the point where they start charging import duty. All up my r-pi 3 cost me almost $100 for everything required to get it running. NZD btw $30 to you is about $50 to me plus 15% GST plus $100 admin fees at the border plus 15% GST on the admin fee, it gets expensive when you look at the actual practical costs. Iv looked at things like the Odroid, and for the price to get one in NZ i can buy a m-ITX celeron with proper SATA and no USB bottlenecks. I apologize as sometimes I forget this is a canadian based forum that is somewhat international.

 

I quite like MikeMake who does a weekly review of new products. this one was done 6 days ago so Im waiting to see if he will do this new r-pi in a day or two. He seems quite competent at commenting on electronics

 

 

[KuJoe]

2 hours ago, SCHISCHKA said:

yes but like i said the r-pi goal is to be as cheap as possible

I don't see why Raspberry Pi can't offer better options though, the community support and software support is so great but the hardware is lacking and every "update" is basically just a new CPU with a little more RAM. I'll keep buying them to hopefully not be completely disappointed one day.

[IrshaadAbdool]

21 hours ago, KuJoe said:

I don't see why Raspberry Pi can't offer better options though, the community support and software support is so great but the hardware is lacking and every "update" is basically just a new CPU with a little more RAM. I'll keep buying them to hopefully not be completely disappointed one day.

What if the basic idea from the foundation was not a high performance machine just enough for diy projects of not such a high level?

[KuJoe]

2 minutes ago, IrshaadAbdool said:

What if the basic idea from the foundation was not a high performance machine just enough for diy projects of not such a high level?

Then that would be a shame to waste such potential. Imagine having a desktop replacement for under $100 using less than 10 watts of power, that's what ODroid is doing now but with a fraction of the community support and OS development that Raspberry Pi has.

[IrshaadAbdool]

10 minutes ago, KuJoe said:

Then that would be a shame to waste such potential. Imagine having a desktop replacement for under $100 using less than 10 watts of power, that's what ODroid is doing now but with a fraction of the community support and OS development that Raspberry Pi has.

hmm yes its true..

[IrshaadAbdool]

10 minutes ago, KuJoe said:

Then that would be a shame to waste such potential. Imagine having a desktop replacement for under $100 using less than 10 watts of power, that's what ODroid is doing now but with a fraction of the community support and OS development that Raspberry Pi has.

hmm yes its true..

[Thunderpup]

Do you know if they are going to give it a performance boost as well or are the two new wireless features the only change?  I plan on buying a zero at some.point to do a Pi-boy build. 

 

11 hours ago, IrshaadAbdool said:

What if the basic idea from the foundation was not a high performance machine just enough for diy projects of not such a high level?

The original intent of the Pi, when it first came out, was a cheap computer to use for learning.  They wanted to promote teaching programming and make it affordable; while having a vehicle to do just that.  Which is why a lot of them get sold to schools to do just that.  Yes they could provide much more powerful hardware, and i wish they would, but that isn't what they are aiming for.