After missing out on getting hold of a copy of December's MagPi magazine with a free Pi Zero, I turned to the many Raspberry Pi suppliers in an attempt to get my hands on a one of these newly released miniature boards. Only to be dissapointed again after the first released batch had sold out everywhere. I thought not to worry I'll just wait for the next batch, and to my disbelief I'd missed the window again. I followed on Twitter the news that the Zero's were back in stock but I mistaklenly allowed 24 hours to pass before I was ready to purchase and I'd missed out yet again.
Following the announcements that there were more Zero's on the way, this time I was ready. thepithut.com released 50% of their stock for sale from 9am, by 9.07am my purchase was confirmed, and the very next day I was the proud owner of this 6.5cm by 3cm computer.
Now to setup the Zero and check out its performance.
I prepared a micro SD card with the Raspbian Jessie operating system, connected all required peripherals and booted up for the first run. I was pleasantly surprised to find myself presented with the familiar desktop interface, without having to log in at the command line or to "start" the GUI environment. From here I installed all the neccessary libraries, as outlined on the How To page, along with the C2 Fishy Pi game.
For testing I was using a Concept2 PM5 connected by USB and a rowing simluator mp3 audio file fed to the signal input socket. Now it was all ready to go.
I was so pleased to see that the application ran beautifully, there was no lag whatsoever, and the cpu was showing a steady reading of 80%-84%. The equipment I used in the entire setup was:
- Pi Zero running Raspbian Jessie
- Kingston microSD 16gb Class 10
- USB to microUSB adaptor cable
- Advent 4-port powered USB Hub
- Edimax Wifi dongle
- Rii wireless keyboard w/tracker pad
- LCD Monitor connected by VGA to HDMI adaptor with a HDMI to microHDMI extender
- Mains Adaptor 5v - 2A microUSB
- Concept2 PM5
- MP3 player audio rowing siumlator
I consider this as a resounding success, and I have to take my hat off to the extremely good people at the Raspberry Pi foundation for their remarkable achievements.