There’s been a fair amount of hype in the technical press about the Pi Zero (see https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/pi-zero/) recently — and fair enough. Very cheap, reasonably powerful, and as small as you could ever imagine for a fully fledged linux computer. I’ve been showing mine off to friends and family, just because it’s been small enough to fit in my pocket without noticing it.

But what’s the point if it’s not doing something useful. Tonight I finally fired it up.

I am, in fact, writing this post on the Pi Zero.

First impressions, when I got it free with a magazine, were “wow! Tiny, cheap, powerful — the world’s my oyster!”

Second impressions were less positive.

After ordering a set adaptors for micro USB, mini HDMI, a USB WiFi dongle, a new micro SD card and I  also had to locate a USB hub. Then I found my pre-formatted NOOBS SD card wouldn’t boot! For some reason I had to format it and install NOOBS on it myself.

My main complaint though is the lack of Ethernet port. I’ve got two other Raspberry Pi’s in the house running headless (just a network connection — no keyboard, mouse or monitor) and they do some very useful things for me — but only because they’re on the network. USB-to-WiFi or USB-to-Ethernet just seems a bit too clunky.

I do plan to try connecting the GPIO pins to an Ehternet module at some point (https://gajdicookbook.wordpress.com/2015/02/25/rasberry-pi-a-with-internet/)

Aside from the above annoyances, it does actually work.