While I was out for Thanksgiving and in a turkey coma, a new Raspberry Pi dev board was released, put on sale, and quickly sold out in less than 24 hours. Raspberry Pi’s popularity is ever increasing as its price point for good hardware drops even lower.

On November 26th, the Raspberry Pi Foundation announced the $5 Raspberry Pi Zero, further reducing the cost barrier to entry for a programmable computer.

The smallest Raspberry Pi yet at 65 mm x 30 mm x 5 mm (about half the size of a credit card), packs a punch with a Broadcom BCM2835 application processor with a 1 GHz ARM11 core – that’s 40 percent faster than the Raspberry Pi 1! Other features include:

• 512 MB LPDDR2 SDRAM
• 1 micro-SD card slot
• 1 mini-HDMI socket for 1080p60 video output
• 2 Micro-USB sockets for data and power
• 40-pin GPIO header (unpopulated, and identical pinout to the Model A+/B+/2B Raspberry Pis)
• Composite video header (unpopulated)
• Runs Raspbian

With good hardware stats at an even lower cost, even more people will be able to use the Raspberry Pi in a variety of projects ranging from a beginner’s first programming and hardware experience to professional prototypes – if you can get your hands on one!

It’s a little disheartening to see some of the 20,000+ Raspberry Pi Zeros from launch day on sale on eBay for up to 30 times their selling price as that defeats the purpose of easily afforded hardware for anyone interested in using a programmable computer. And profiting off of an open-source board completely defeats the spirit of the maker community.

But there will be more made as the Wales production plant pumps new Zeros out as fast as it can (though no date has been given to when the next batch will be available), and more opportunities to buy at the right price. Once they’re back in stock, there’s no excuse not to get your hands on a great dev board at $5!

See a video and the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s announcement at https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/raspberry-pi-zero/