New Pi Zero

[p8712]

$10 - now with wifi!

No word on circumference....

[cbelt3]

I continue to be impressed with this project. The overall advances in technology continue to amaze me....

Last year my wife's cousin showed us a small chip at a family dinner. It was perhaps the size of a postage stamp, and about 1/4 inch thick. He's a consulting IC designer, used to develop DRAM for TI, and went off on his own years ago.

The chip contained (If I remember properly) a 2Ghz dual core processor, 4GB of RAM, 32GB of flash, HDMI and audio output, USB3 input. Ran off 5V, very low power requirements, low thermal load. Designed for embedded systems. Imagine the processing power of an array of these ?

[p8712]

Imagine the processing power of an array of these ?

A "supercomputer" cluster of 256 Pi 3's is slower than the slowest i5 CPU...the Zero would be half as fast. But the miniturization is incredible. A Pi, running off 5 volt usb, can do an amazing amount of computing.

[Filliam H. Muffman]

The specs comparison graphic shows they deleted the GPU from the W model. I need to start digging into these. It looks like I could build my own tiny 12 MP dashcam, I just need add a GPS receiver and a precise 6 axis g-meter.

[Paul F.]

Filliam H. Muffman wrote:
The specs comparison graphic shows they deleted the GPU from the W model. I need to start digging into these. It looks like I could build my own tiny 12 MP dashcam, I just need add a GPS receiver and a precise 6 axis g-meter.

Why stop there?
Make it a full "flight data recorder"... dash cam, backup cam, left side cam, right side cam. GPS, G-meter, maybe outside and inside temp, just for grins. Continuous upload of GPS data to a cloud service over 4G might be pushing it.... but darn handy in the event of theft.

Of course, this is being proposed by someone who has NO idea how to actually program such things.

Still, that'd be cool, right?

[Filliam H. Muffman]

Four video streams would be pushing it for a Pi. Uploading GPS data would be easy since there are already units that do that. The challenge is doing it reliably with less cost.

[Paul F.]

Filliam H. Muffman wrote:
Four video streams would be pushing it for a Pi. Uploading GPS data would be easy since there are already units that do that. The challenge is doing it reliably with less cost.

Well, the left and right cams would only need to be 640x480... Rear cam maybe only used for a "backup cam"...
Still, fun to think about!

[p8712]

Pi backup Cam

Pi Dashcam

Obiligtory Supercomputer

Pi mac

FYI the zero makes a good, and cheap media player/server too...but you'd need a Pi 3 to decode h.265 video.

The specs comparison graphic shows they deleted the GPU from the W model

Specs are supposed to be identical to the original zero, but for the wireless.

[Filliam H. Muffman]

p8712 wrote:
Pi Dashcam

(sigh) All the parts for just a 720p system adds up to almost as much as a prepaid phone that will do over 1080p.

p8712 wrote:

The specs comparison graphic shows they deleted the GPU from the W model

Specs are supposed to be identical to the original zero, but for the wireless.

Sorry, I made a mistake. I was comparing a Pi 3 (B) to a Pi Zero W (which is why the Pi 3 will do h.265).

[Lew Zealand]

p8712 wrote:

Imagine the processing power of an array of these ?

A "supercomputer" cluster of 256 Pi 3's is slower than the slowest i5 CPU...the Zero would be half as fast. But the miniturization is incredible. A Pi, running off 5 volt usb, can do an amazing amount of computing.

That seems to be completely wrong, just going by Geekbench numbers alone. By an order of magnitude. Got any data to back that up?