Raspberry Pi Roundup - 28th November 2015

The Big News: Zero

The big news is, of course, that the Raspberry Pi Zero has been launched. The Zero has got the original BCM2835 chip on-board as well as 512MB of RAM. It's been pre-overclocked so that it is around 30-40% faster than the A+. It's tiny, cute, and useful for projects where you want to embed a Pi with low power.

We're currently out of stock but we are expecting stock in very soon. So, if you'd like to know when we have them back in stock, go to our product page and sign up for the mailing list.

We are also doing a special Essential Kit pack to get you started with headers and adapters galore.

This is also out of stock but, again, we're expecting more in soon. Go to the product page to find out more and sign up for the mailing list.

Astro

Astronaut Tim Peake and Astro Pi competition winner Hannah Belshaw were interviewed on the BBC’s magazine programme The One Show. If you’re in the UK, you can watch the episode online via BBC iPlayer. Tim and Hannah talk about Astro Pi 9 minutes 15 seconds in. Read more about the appearance on the Raspberry Pi blog and read more about Astro Pi itself on the dedicated website.

RADAR

Martin O’Hanlon has previously used Pi Aware to access publicly available data about aircraft positions. Now he has taken his work further by creating a RADAR system that displays aircraft positions relative to your GPS co-ordinates. It’s a great example of taking a simple API and creating something great from the data. All the code is available on his website, so head over there to find out more.

7-segment

Alex Eames has written a great blog post in which he wires up and uses a 7-segment display using the Raspberry Pi. The display, which is of the common cathode type, has 4 digits and Alex shows you how to get resistors in place to prevent the display from burning out. He then provides the Python code to display things on the unit. He is offering kits for £12, including postage, which I think is good value for money considering what is contained in it (pictured below). Read the blog post here.