Even the Raspberry Pi has a little friend
Raspberry Pi
A short time ago we heard about a really small computer, the Raspberry Pi Zero by the Raspberry Pi Foundation, the latest in the Raspberry Pi range of miniature full blown computers and selling for a mere $5. In fact it was given away with the Magpi magazine.
Smaller than a credit card, this phenomenal device supports various Linux operating systems including its own variety and runs an X86 architecture 1 GHz processor with 512MB of RAM, HMDI, miniature USB and much more.
Omega2
Now there's a new kid on the block. Just announced, it is even smaller than the Raspberry Pi. The new kid is the Omega2 by Onion and is roughly the size of a cherry. Boosted by startup facilitator Kickstarter it was fully funded within hours of its acceptance and will be in production in November 2016.
The Omega2 is the followup to the Omega.
Onion also provides Onion Cloud, which facilitates control of the Omega2 from a Web Browser and a range of APIs.
It boasts a 580 MHz CPU, 64MB of memory, and 16MB of storage and has built-in WIFI. There are a number of add-on modules which enhance it further.
Neither are these two alone, done there in miniature world. There are a number of competitors which are not quite as small or inexpensive but each of them has features and attributes which suit them for various functions, not only in traditional computing applications but in the world of the Internet of Things(IOT) which is coming at us at quite a pace.
These products are waiting for innovation which will incorporate them into new dynamic technology of the future.
See embedded links for sources.
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(I'd previously built an Elf)
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The Trash 80, as it was not so affectionately called cost
$500...and did approximately nothing. It had a fricking audio casset player for external memory...It was not as powerful as the raspberry pi yet cost one hundred times as much.
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The first useable computer I owned was the Amiga
which cost me $700. After a few years of using it I got my first hard drive.
ten megabytes for $2400. (15 gigabytes available free many places on the cloud today)
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Ten thousand dollars worth of memory in 1980 is free today
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and yet a house today cost ten times as much now as it did then.
I know how you feel...
Impressive miniaturization and, most especially, the specs! thanks for sharing and the info. Namaste :)
Hey, you should also tell that there are more raspberry pi's and also their concurrents. Also you should encluded all acessories for micro computers. You can have alot of fun with them but I still wait for nano computers XD
Great post @gavvet !
I am all the time super excited for new tech and keep searching somthing between good quality and onest price.
This may be a dumb question, but how does a person use these computers? Or is that the innovation we're waiting on that you reference at the end of the article?
The raspberry pi's have hdmi out. Just plug in a monitor, USB keyboard and mouse, and you have a full blown computer.
blink
wireless ?
that too.
The Pi has an HDMI port for video. It has sound and a mini usb to which you can connect a USB hub through which you attach mouse a keyboard, externsal HDD, WIFI and virtually anything else that takes your fancy.
The idea though, is that they be incorperated into other technology, especially for the IOT. There are some interesting YouTube vids on this kind of inovation, already happening, along with many other such tiny computers
These are not the only ones out there by any means.
Thank you for the interesting information
Well if I had to add one to the list I would say Chip makes the cut.
Chip is a TINY wireless, WiFi+BLE, computer with 1GHz + 512mb RAM + 4GB flash that started as a Kickstarter project too, that I've personally backed, for 9 USD, and received already.
I've been playing with it for a while now and I'm pretty happy with how it works.
For more info you can check the website getchip.com and I really recommend checking out the forums where the community has made a lot of contributions since it is fully Open Source.
I can write a Story with more info if anyone is interested, just let me know.
Disclaimer: It may sound like i was paid to advertise it but I'm just a happy backer...
This is very interesting, thanks for sharing!
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