Pi Zero Impressions

Jake Walker -

I brought a Raspberry Pi Zero on Friday because it was really hyped up and it was also very cheap. I brought mine from The Pi Hut, I got the Zero + Essentials Kit variation (which costed £10.25 at the time of purchase).

First Impressions

My first impression of the Pi Zero was that it was extremely small. The only place I had seen it is in magazines which made it look bigger. When I first booted it up it took a while making me think it was going to be quite slow but once it was booted up it seemed quite snappy (in bash/command line mode).

Setup

  • I first plugged in the HDMI adapter then a (powered) HDMI to VGA adapter as my monitor is VGA.
  • Next, I plugged in my OTG cable then plugged that into a powered USB Hub which I had my keyboard, mouse and Wi-Fi dongle connected.
  • Then, I inserted my microSD card which I had put Raspbian on (I used the lite version (which has no desktop GUI) as I like to run my Pi's headless and its more fun to learn bash :))
  • I plugged in the power then waited for it to boot up for the first time.
  • I typed in pi for the username and raspberry for the password.
  • I then expanded the filesystem to use the whole of my SD card by typing sudo raspi-config then selecting 'Expand Filesystem'.
  • I then finished by rebooting the Pi.
  • I then set up the Wi-Fi by: (using this article)
  • Scanning for networks using sudo iwlist wlan0 scan but as I already knew my Wi-Fi SSID and Password it was unnecessary. The ESSID part is the SSID you need for later
  • Opening the configuration file by typing sudo nano /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf. Then going to the bottom of the file and adding:
network={
    ssid="ssid of your network"
    psk="password of your network"
}
  • Next, I updated the apt packages by typing sudo apt-get update. You could also do sudo apt-get upgrade if your image is a bit old.
  • As I had no desktop, I decided to install Lynx. A web browser that can be used in the command line. You can install it by typing sudo apt-get install lynx. Then opening it by typing lynx.

Overall the Raspberry Pi Zero is great for the £5 price tag but can set you back a little more for the adapters. It is very small so can be used for projects when a traditional Pi is too big.