A new flavour of the Raspberry Pi has been launched, and if you thought previous models were cheap, then this one takes the budget biscuit.
The Raspberry Pi Zero doesn't quite cost nothing, but as its name might suggest, the device's price tag is very close to it and you can pick one up for £4 (or $5 over in the US, which is around AU$7).
For that next-to-nothing outlay, you get yourself a tiny system powered by a Broadcom BCM2835 CPU running at 1GHz, backed with 512MB of LPDDR2 SDRAM, complete with a microSD slot, mini-HDMI port (allowing for 1080p video output at 60 fps) and micro-USB sockets.
It runs Raspbian, and is the smallest Raspberry Pi ever made with dimensions of 65 x 30 x 5mm (check the size relative to a $5 bill in the image above).
Supply and demand
"Several tens of thousands" of the devices have been made, but it's expected to be pretty popular at this price point, so you might have to order quickly before supplies run dry. At the time of writing, stocks from the UK sellers highlighted in the blog post trumpeting the launch are still holding up.
Interestingly, the December issue of the MagPi magazine has the Raspberry Pi Zero cover-mounted, and that apparently arrives in stores in the UK today (subscribers will get one too – though hopefully there won't be any danger of it getting mushed in the post).
As well as a free Zero, the mag contains various articles based on the tiny computer including project ideas to spark your imagination as to what can be done with the device.
