deʃhipuSo I just received the Pi Zero, and I had some fun playing with it already. I wanted to share some of my comments about the technical aspects of the new board.
The Good
- price
- small size
- mounting holes
- backwards-compatible gpio header
- unpopulated header
- all components are one one side of the board, the other side is flat and clean
- all sockets are on one edge (plus SD card slot on another edge, but that's just two edges)
- all LEDs are together on the edge
- video out and reset on separate unpopulated header
- lots of test points and unpopulated socket footprint on the underside
- 700Mhz by default, with an option to overclock to 1000Mhz
- SD card images compatible with other Pis
The Bad
- the two USB ports are too close together, making it hard to fit two plugs
- the USB ports are not exposed as pin headers or any other kind of socket that could be used by a "USB hub shield"
- no version with unpopulated usb and hdmi
- no audio circuit, although one can hack one
- the additional GPIO pins that are freed by having less hardware on the board are not exposed
The Ugly
- I would prefer it to be a little bit more short and square -- but I understand that then the standard GPIO header wouldn't fit.
- micro-USB and micro-HDMI requiring additional adapters -- that's not such a big deal for me, but it's an inconvenience
- no on-board bluetooth or wifi — that would be useful for me personally
Discussions
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Great Points mate!
I have two and am really just having a play around with them now.
There are some great links surfacing regarding the drawbacks of this board for beginners.
In future I will probably prep all my images on one of my B+ boards and swapping the SD card into the Zero for deployment.
That being said, I am successfully tethering my Zero to my phone via USB for internet and SSH, and it's a doddle to use on the go!
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Well, sure, you need to buy all the adapters, but that is a one-time cost, and you need to have a keyboard and monitor screen with HDMI anyways. The great thing about the $5 price point, though, is not that it's cheap to get started (it's not), but that it's cheap to break it and replace with a new one. This really is great to encourage stress-less tinkering.
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I agree completely!
I have everything bar the hdmi adaptor, but I have ordered the 5$/£4 adaptor kit off their site. Sorted, as simple as that!
When I first started messing with Pis I certainly had a fear of breaking it. At $5/£4 a pop I would be far less cautious and a lot more adventurous with my learning. This can only be a good thing for people new to the Pi and the hobby in general.
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You can always just connect a USB2TTL to the serial pins, it has a standard linux console there.
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