Recently the Raspberry Pi foundation announced another exciting milestone for enthusiasts in IoT and home automation… a $5 version of the massively popular Pi.  Named the Raspberry Pi Zero, it takes the already quite small credit-card sized Pi and deploys it in an even smaller package at an incredible price.  Good luck finding one though… Although, I did manage to find one recently, but only if I purchased it in a more expensive bundle.  The bundle though included external pins, an adapter for the mini HDMI and another for the micro-USB, all of which I could use.  You can find it here if you are in the Toronto area.

Here’s a comparison of the Raspberry Pi 2 and the Pi Zero.  Keep in mind the Pi 2 is about the size of a credit card!

The profile of this thing as well is minuscule.  What we have then is an extremely portable but decently powered and full-featured computer for about $5 that could be deployed literally anywhere for our home automation purposes:

Next up will be some of my experiences with the Pi Zero.