Meet the Coolest Raspberry Pi Family Member: Raspberry Pi Zero W Wireless

In early 2017, Raspberry Pi community announced a new board with wireless extension. It is a highly promising board allowing everyone to connect their devices to the Internet. Offering a wireless functionality where everyone can develop their own projects without cables and components. It uses their skills to develop projects including software and hardware. This board is the new toy of any engineer interested in Internet of Things, security, automation and more!

Comparing the new board with Raspberry Pi 3 Model B we can easily figure that it is quite small with many possibilities over the Internet of Things. But what is a Raspberry Pi Zero W and why do you need it? In today’s post, we will cover the following topics:

Overview of the Raspberry Pi family

Introduction to the new Raspberry Pi Zero W

Distributions

Common issues

Raspberry Pi family

As said earlier Raspberry Pi Zero W is the new member of Raspberry Pi family boards. All these years Raspberry Pi evolved and became more user friendly with endless possibilities. Let's have a short look at the rest of the family so we can understand the difference of the Pi Zero board.

Right now, the heavy board is named Raspberry Pi 3 Model B. It is the best solution for projects such as face recognition, video tracking, gaming or anything else that is in demand:

It is the 3rd generation of Raspberry Pi boards after Raspberry Pi 2 and has the following specs:

A 1.2GHz 64-bit quad-core ARMv8 CPU

11n Wireless LAN

Bluetooth 4.1

Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE)

Like the Pi 2, it also has

1GB RAM

4 USB ports

40 GPIO pins

Full HDMI port

Ethernet port

Combined 3.5mm audio jack and composite video

Camera interface (CSI)

Display interface (DSI)

Micro SD card slot (now push-pull rather than push-push)

VideoCore IV 3D graphics core

The next board is Raspberry Pi Zero, in which the Zero W was based. A small low cost and power board able to do many things:

The specs of this board can be found as follows:

1GHz, Single-core CPU

512MB RAM

Mini-HDMI port

Micro-USB OTG port

Micro-USB power

HAT-compatible 40-pin header

Composite video and reset headers

CSI camera connector (v1.3 only)

At this point we should not forget to mention that apart from the boards mentioned earlier there are several other modules and components such as the Sense Hat or Raspberry Pi Touch Display available which will work great for advance projects.

The 7″ Touchscreen Monitor for Raspberry Pi gives users the ability to create all-in-one, integrated projects such as tablets, infotainment systems and embedded projects:

Where Sense HAT is an add-on board for Raspberry Pi, made especially for the Astro Pi mission. The Sense HAT has an 8×8 RGB LED matrix, a five-button joystick and includes the following sensors:

Gyroscope

Accelerometer

Magnetometer

Temperature

Barometric pressure

Humidity

Stay tuned with more new boards and modules at the official website: https://www.raspberrypi.org/

Raspberry Pi Zero W

Raspberry Pi Zero W is a small device that has the possibilities to be connected either on an external monitor or TV and of course it is connected to the internet. The operating system varies as there are many distros in the official page and almost everyone is baled on Linux systems.

With Raspberry Pi Zero W you have the ability to do almost everything, from automation to gaming! It is a small computer that allows you easily program with the help of the GPIO pins and some other components such as a camera. Its possibilities are endless!

Specifications

If you have bought Raspberry PI 3 Model B you would be familiar with Cypress CYW43438 wireless chip. It provides 802.11n wireless LAN and Bluetooth 4.0 connectivity. The new Raspberry Pi Zero W is equipped with that wireless chip as well. Following you can find the specifications of the new board:

- Dimensions: 65mm × 30mm × 5mm
- SoC:Broadcom BCM 2835 chip
  - ARM11 at 1GHz, single core CPU
  - 512ΜΒ RAM
- Storage: MicroSD card
- Video and Audio:1080P HD video and stereo audio via mini-HDMI connector
- Power:5V, supplied via micro USB connector
- Wireless:2.4GHz 802.11 n wireless LAN
- Bluetooth: Bluetooth classic 4.1 and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE)
- Output: Micro USB
- GPIO: 40-pin GPIO, unpopulated

Notice that all the components are on the top side of the board so you can easily choose your case without any problems and keep it safe. As far as the antenna concern, it is formed by etching away copper on each layer of the PCB. It may not be visible as it is in other similar boards but it is working great and offers quite a lot functionalities:

Also, the product is limited to only one piece per buyer and costs 10$. You can buy a full kit with microsd card, a case and some more extra components for about 45$ or choose the camera full kit which contains a small camera component for 55$.

Camera support

Image processing projects such as video tracking or face recognition require a camera. Following you can see the official camera support of Raspberry Pi Zero W. The camera can easily be mounted at the side of the board using a cable like the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B board:

Depending on your distribution you many need to enable the camera though command line. More information about the usage of this module will be mentioned at the project.

Accessories

Well building projects with the new board there are some other gadgets that you might find useful working with. Following there is list of some crucial components. Notice that if you buy Raspberry Pi Zero W kit, it includes some of them. So, be careful and don't double buy them:

OTG cable

powerHUB

GPIO header

microSD card and card adapter

HDMI to miniHDMI cable

HDMI to VGA cable

Distributions

The official site https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/ contains several distributions for downloading. The two basic operating systems that we will analyze after are RASPBIAN and NOOBS. Following you can see how the desktop environment looks like. Both RASPBIAN and NOOBS allows you to choose from two versions. There is the full version of the operating system and the lite one. Obviously the lite version does not contain everything that you might use so if you tend to use your Raspberry with a desktop environment choose and download the full version. On the other side if you tend to just ssh and do some basic stuff pick the lite one. It' s really up to you and of course you can easily download again anything you like and re-write your microSD card:

NOOBS distribution

Download NOOBS: https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/noobs/.

NOOBS distribution is for the new users with not so much knowledge in linux systems and Raspberry PI boards. As the official page says it is really "New Out Of the Box Software". There is also pre-installed NOOBS SD cards that you can purchase from many retailers, such as Pimoroni, Adafruit, and The Pi Hut, and of course you can download NOOBS and write your own microSD card. If you are having trouble with the specific distribution take a look at the following links:

Full guide at https://www.raspberrypi.org/help/videos/#noobs-setup.

NOOBS operating system contains Raspbian and it provides various of other operating systems available to download.

RASPBIAN distribution

Download RASPBIAN: https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/raspbian/.

Raspbian is the official supported operating system. It can be installed though NOOBS or be downloading the image file at the following link and going through the guide of the official website.

Image file: https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/ which, usually comes as a .zip file. Once downloaded, unzip the zip file, the full image is about 4.5 Gigabytes. Depending on your operating system you have to use different programs:

7-Zip for Windows

The Unarchiver for Mac

Unzip for Linux

Now we are ready to write the image in the MicroSD card. You can easily write the .img file in the microSD card by following one of the next guides according to your system.

For Linux users dd tool is recommended. Before connecting your microSD card with your adaptor in your computer run the following command:

df -h

Now connect your card and run the same command again. You must see some new records. For example if the new device is called /dev/sdd1 keep in your mind that the card is at /dev/sdd (without the 1).

The next step is to use the dd command and copy the image to the microSD card. We can do this by the following command:

dd if=<path to your image> of=</dev/***>

Where if is the input file (image file or the distribution) and of is the output file (microSD card). Again be careful here and use only /dev/sdd or whatever is yours without any numbers. If you are having trouble with that please use the full manual at the following link sudo apt-get install gparted

Then run sudogparted to start the tool. Its handles partitions very easily and you can format, delete or find information about all your mounted partitions.

More information about ddcan be found here:

For Windows users Win32DiskImager utility is recommended:

This article is an excerpt from the book Raspberry Pi Zero W Wireless Projects written by Vasilis Tzivaras. The Raspberry Pi has always been the go–to, lightweight ARM-based computer. This book will help you design and build interesting DIY projects using the Raspberry Pi Zero W board.[/box]