Episode: 2271
Title: HPR2271: Raspberry Pi Zero W
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2271/hpr2271.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-19 00:41:19

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This is HPR episode 2,271 entitled Raspberry Pi Zero W and in part on the series Hardware Upgrades.
It is hosted by Tony H1,212 and in about 6 minutes long and carry a clean flag.
The summary is an introduction to the new Pi Zero W from the Raspberry Pi Foundation.
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Hello I could public radio listeners, this is Tony Hughes in Blupple in the UK again.
For this episode I'm going to talk about the Raspberry Pi Zero W which I received last week after its release on the anniversary of the Raspberry Pi Foundation.
For those who are not in the know, the Raspberry Pi is a single board computer which started off in 2012
with two USB ports, an Ethernet port, HDMI for video, composite to audio and video out and also 256 mega ram and a 700 megahertz CPU, single core ARM CPU.
This is morphed over the last few years and the latest iteration of the main board, the Raspberry Pi 3 now, has a quad core ARM 1.2 processor with HDMI composite video audio for USB ports, Ethernet ports, but also now supports Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.
The Raspberry Pi Zero came out in November 2015 and it's a very very compact little single board PC and it's got USB power, micro USB power, micro USB out only a single one.
Mini HDMI out and SD card like all of the Raspberry Pi's have for the operating system, but when it was first released that was it, it was a single core, I think it was one gig from the start off.
So since then there was a second revision of it which added a camera port to make it a bit more usable for hobbyists etc.
But the community of hobbyists out there have been clamoring ever since it's released for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connection.
There's been loads and loads of different hacks trying to get it onto the internet or to be able to connect to SSH and into it all sorts of things.
But the biggest thing that community has been crying out for has been Wi-Fi and Bluetooth enable.
So on the fifth birthday, on the 28th of February, they announced the release of the Raspberry Pi Zero W which does just that.
They've integrated the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth stack chip from the Raspberry Pi 3.
Rather than having a hardware aerial to connect to the internet, they've incorporated an aerial that's engraved into the PCB.
So I received one of these or a couple of these last week, but I haven't got around to playing with it until today.
So I hooked up my Raspberry Pi Zero to the monitor etc. I have home Wi-Fi here.
So when it booted, I downloaded the latest version of Raspberry and burned that onto the microSD card installed, inserted that into it, booted up and all booted up fine.
Initially it did the expanding the card image to take over a whole of the card which was a 16 gig card.
But after that first booted up, a reboot only took about 30 seconds which 30 seconds to a minute.
It's pretty good for a 512 memory. So I was quite happy with that.
Went down to the Wi-Fi connection or to the internet connection.
It picked up my Wi-Fi signal straight away and I duly connected to it initially because of where I am in the house, where I was testing it out.
It didn't like connecting to my home Wi-Fi.
But as fortune have it, I've got a 4G box that I use when I'm on the go.
I purchased that couple of weeks ago when I was just after I came out of hospital after being loaned one by a friend of mine.
And it worked great while I was in hospital so I could keep connected.
So this is the first out scene I gave it. Got that working. Got the Wi-Fi connected to it on the Raspberry Pi.
And hey ho, I'm on the internet. The Raspberry Pi 0W works fine out of the box. So very happy.
Not decided what we're going to do with them yet, but I've got a few. We can play with them at the makerspace and I'm also a member of the local Raspberry Jam community.
So I'm sure some of the young people there can come up with some projects that we can try out using the makeshues of the Wi-Fi.
So that's it. The Raspberry Pi 0W for me works out of the box with the Wi-Fi.
So all it is now is to figure out what to do with it. Thanks for listening. Bye.
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