Raspberry Pi's new Pi Zero board expands portfolio

Farnell element14 has expanded its extensive Raspberry Pi product range by launching the smallest form factor Raspberry Pi on the market, the new Raspberry Pi Zero. The ultra-slim Raspberry Pi board is the smallest form factor Raspberry Pi on the market today at only 65mm long by 30mm wide and 5mm deep. To save space and reduce cost on the new Raspberry Pi Zero there is one Micro USB data port and a Mini HDMI port which supports full HD 1080P output. The 40pin GPIO contains the same pin out as per the Raspberry Pi 2 but is unpopulated providing the flexibility to use only the connections the solution requires. The Raspberry Pi Zero uses the single-core BCM2835 processor, which can now be over-clocked to 1GHz, the board has 512MB of onboard RAM with a MicroSD port for storage. Claire Doyle, global head of Raspberry Pi, element14, said: "We are excited to be further extending our Raspberry Pi product portfolio with the Raspberry Pi Zero, the smallest and cheapest Raspberry Pi on the market. element14 is the go to destination for the full portfolio of Raspberry Pi models ranging from the latest high performance Raspberry Pi 2 model B, through the Raspberry Pi 1 series of models A+, B and B+, to the newly added base model Pi Zero. A complete ecosystem of accessories is available for all series of the Raspberry Pi, so that users can enjoy the 100's of applications the Raspberry Pi enables no matter what the model." It is expected that this model will appeal to hobbyists and makers as well as industrial engineers looking to create solutions where size and low power consumption is at a premium such as robots, drones for capturing video, or to connect to add-ons for motor control.