Raspberry Pi launches new Zero, the £4 PC

For the past week or so, there have been rumors about a new Raspberry Pi circulating around the Internet.

On the down side, the Raspberry Pi foundation needed to cut a few ports from the Zero to build such a small board.

THE RASPBERRY PI FOUNDATION is practically giving away the latest entry to its pocket PC canon with a £4 option called the Raspberry Pi Zero.

The ports that do remain have also been modified: the full-size HDMI port is replaced by a mini-HDMI, and the full-size USB port is a micro-USB port which requires a USB On-The-Go (OTG) adapter before it can be connected to standard USB peripherals.

Another shot of the Pi Zero.

This month’s MagPi magazine comes with a free Pi Zero.

Because of its diminuitive size, the micro USB port and computing power means that traditional USB devices may require a USB On The Go connector, in order to work with the Raspberry Pi’s limited set. Other features include an unpopulated 40pin GPIO header with an identical pinout to Model A+/B+/2B and an unpopulated composite video header. Numerous revisions have launched in the years since including the cheaper Model A and faster ARMv7 quad-core Raspberry Pi 2, but today’s launch is arguably the most exciting: the first Raspberry Pi to cost under £5.

Video introducing the Pi Zero.

“Of all the things we do at Raspberry Pi, driving down the cost of computer hardware remains one of the most important”, says a company blog post introducing the Pi Zero.

In the US, the miniature computer will be available online from Adafruit and in-store at branches of Micro Center.

“Even in the developed world, a programmable computer is a luxury item for a lot of people, and every extra dollar that we ask someone to spend decreases the chance that they’ll choose to get involved”. The price of copper nowadays, eh? Also, a free Raspberry Pi Zero unit will be available from each copy of the December issue of the MagPi to please Raspberry Pi fans in the UK.